


Fall at your feet

by illwynd



Category: Thor - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Blood and Injury, Bottom Thor, Character Death, Dubious Consent, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, M/M, Manipulation, Mental Health Issues, Politics, Sibling Incest, Top Loki, Violence, Voluntary Servitude, Warning: Loki, god!Loki/mortal!Thor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-26
Updated: 2014-06-08
Packaged: 2018-01-26 13:20:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 17
Words: 76,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1689818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/illwynd/pseuds/illwynd
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Thor confronts the Destroyer, offering himself up for the sake of the humans, Loki has a better idea: he won’t take Thor’s life. He’ll take him back to Asgard, as a mortal, with a promise to serve Loki and obey him completely. Thor, eager to heal the rift between them, is only too happy to agree. But he has no idea how damaged his brother truly is or what he really wants from him—and when he finds out, everything between them is going to change.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Some of you may remember reading this story way back on Norsekink a couple years ago. I wound up pretty badly dissatisfied with large swathes of the story, but at the time I just couldn’t get it right and I couldn’t bear to leave it unfinished while I got my head straight. After enough time passed, though, and on the encouragement of a friend or two (you know who you are, and you are awesome), I went back to revise and edit. The result is what you see before you. While still of the same basic shape, some parts have been almost entirely rewritten (particularly in the last few chapters), a bunch of extraneous material has been mercilessly snipped, and various things I wanted to fix or forgot to include the first time around are now fixed or included. A long-awaited epilogue has also been added. All in all, I think it’s much better now.
> 
> For those of you who have never read this beast before, the original prompt asked for Loki offering Thor a deal in which he’ll take Thor’s servitude in exchange for not tearing up Puente Antiguo with the Destroyer, and thus dubcon subsequently happens before Thor gets his powers back. I still don’t know how it grew to 75k words. 
> 
> Either way, I hope you enjoy it.

At the edge of a desert in Midgard, Thor faced the Destroyer, neck craned as he looked up at its expressionless metal face, the glint of sunlight blinding in his eyes as he sought for any sign of the one who had sent it and now guided its actions. His chest ached at the knowledge that his brother would go to these lengths to hurt him. All the anger and betrayal he had felt when Sif told him… when he found out how Loki had deceived him… all that had dissolved in a single, sinking moment as he saw the evidence of his brother’s wrath and found that he had no idea of the reason for it. And there had to be a reason for his brother to do what he had done. Thor _knew_ that Loki loved him, _knew_ that while Loki might tease him and trick him for the joy of it, he wouldn’t do _this_ for no purpose.

Something must have driven Loki to this, and Thor did not know what it was. So now he stared up at the tiny reflection of himself in the Destroyer’s mirrored surface, and he tried desperately to understand.

“Whatever I have done to wrong you,” Thor began, uncertain, as he took another step nearer.

That step seemed to sink into the hard ground. As he asked the question of himself he saw, as if in a flash, the whole of their lives together, and he noticed for the first time his brother silent and overlooked at his side, hurt simmering within him.

Thor stopped, swallowing the warm murmur of anxiety and guilt rushing through him, and tried to put his feeling into his next words. “…I am truly sorry.”

The Destroyer made no response, yet Thor felt as if Loki were there next to him, listening to his apology and weighing it on his most unforgiving scales, jaw clenched and eyes fierce. He forced himself to go on; he forced himself to remember that there were others on this realm that could be caught up all too easily in Loki’s vengeance, and that he had meant to place himself between them.

“These people are innocent,” he said. “Taking their lives will change nothing.”  
  
Then Thor took one more step, still gazing upward, and tried to speak directly to the brother who had always made him laugh—in whose company he had always been so happy that he had never noticed his own failings.

“So take mine.”

There was a moment of stillness, the scorching air breathing against the sweat on Thor’s brow. And then the Destroyer turned away. For one instant Thor tensed; a momentary vision of a backhanded blow, a deadly insult, a disdain Loki could not express with mere words. But it didn’t happen, and instead he heard Loki’s voice from so close it seemed to come from inside his head, hissing bitter and low, by sorcery over the vast distance between realms.

“Promise me anything. Promise me whatever I want, and I’ll spare them.”

“Anything,” Thor agreed, his voice heavy with relief. “You have my word, brother.” _This_ he could promise. He would have given up his life to make this right; if Loki asked for anything less, he would give it just as gladly.

There was a soft chuckle as Loki appeared beside him, in his full armor, Gungnir’s gleam catching the sunlight and piercing the blue of the sky. “Then I ask only this: your servitude, as you are, for as long as I choose to have it, _brother_.”

Thor glanced over his shoulder to see Jane and Erik clutching at each other in confusion, to see a few other gaping mortals who had failed to run, to see his oldest friends staring at them aghast, and the looming shape of the Destroyer where it lingered at the edge of the dusty road. Then he looked back. Loki’s faint smile was a brittle thing.

“If that is what you ask, Loki,” he said earnestly, “I will do it.”

For a moment Loki was silent, studying him as if to gauge his intentions. Thor flicked him a tiny smile.

“Well, then,” Loki said quietly, touching him on the shoulder, his hand lingering there. “Go and say farewell to your mortal friends, and I will bring you home.”  
  
Relief and comfort washed through Thor’s veins then, because he would have his chance to heal the harm he had unwittingly done to his brother. Everything could still be mended. It could have gone so much worse.

*

In the space between worlds, Loki had looked on the ruin the Destroyer had wrought on Midgard, and he knew exactly what he wanted.

He had been planning this from the start. Not like this, of course. Not at first; at first he had believed he merely wished to show clearly how reckless and unready Thor was—at first he had not meant for Thor to be banished at all. But then he had learned other things, and it had all become clear, until his mind was filled with only one thought, only one image: the utter defeat of the mighty Thor. Finally being rid of him. No longer having to exist only in his shadow. Loki had gone to such lengths to reach this point—the final moment before his triumph.

The feeling had not come yet; he did not feel as if he were on the edge of victory, but he clutched at the certainty that it would as he watched Thor stride forward in idiotic bravery to sacrifice himself. He listened, detached and cold, as Thor blundered through apologies for deeds he had not been aware of and wrongs he did not comprehend, as he pleaded for the lives of the mortals he cared so much for. But what he said did not matter. Loki knew exactly what he meant to do. In a moment, Thor’s blood would seep red into the desert ground, his life crushed out under the Destroyer’s fist. Soon Thor’s honest, stupid, beautiful face would be nothing but a memory.

In that moment, Loki realized that was not what he wanted at all.

“Promise me anything,” he heard himself saying, the words slipping unexpected out of his mouth, and he saw the leap of hope in Thor’s eyes. “Promise me whatever I want.”

And Thor had answered, and Loki could not stop himself from stepping out of the grey, hollow shadows of nowhere and onto the soil of Midgard. He thrilled at the momentary shock that crossed Thor’s face.

“Your servitude,” he demanded, a shiver crawling along his spine. Only in that moment did he discover what it was he truly wanted. What he had always wanted.

And Thor agreed. He even tried to give Loki a little smile.

The feeling of triumph at last, giddiness and a pounding heart.

With that, Loki with his own hand dashed away his plan, all of its carefully arranged pieces, more swiftly and surely than ever unkind fate could have. And even as he placed a reassuring touch on Thor’s arm, he was thinking how he would have to be the one to pick those pieces up once more. Bringing Thor back to Asgard had not been part of it, and there were other arrangements he would have to make, and it would all have to be done very soon. As such things always went, it could not wait.

*

“Accompany him back to Asgard,” Loki said to Sif and the Warriors Three, hands clasped behind his back in a posture of cool unconcern, ignoring the dark glares they all gave him. “The Destroyer will follow you, but it will do no more than that. I, unfortunately, have other business I must attend to away from here. I don’t expect it will keep me long. I trust I can depend upon you to keep my brother safe from harm in the meantime.”

Sif was the only one of them who answered, and she only gave a curt nod. “Of course.”

Loki flickered a humorless smile at her. “Good.” And he turned to Thor, who was watching him with an expression of confusion. For an instant neither moved. Sif thought she recognized that look on Thor—it was the look of an impending embrace, if she was any judge—but Loki moved away before it could come to fruition, the green of his cape swirling behind him for an eyeblink before he disappeared into thin air, leaving the group of them standing there, still collecting themselves after the battle only minutes before.

Loki’s disappearance swept across them like a thunderclap and they all seemed to be talking at once, demanding answers from Thor and pouring out relief and happiness.

“What did he say to you? What did _you_ say to get him to stop? I was sure he…” said Fandral, smiling and clapping a friendly hand to Thor’s back.

“I cannot believe he truly sent the Destroyer here after us. Madness!” Volstagg said, cutting Fandral off with a bark of nervous laughter.

“What _did_ happen there, Thor? We could not hear; we were too far,” Sif asked, brows knitted.

“He asked a promise of me. ‘Tis nothing,” Thor said, trying to smile. “All is well.”

“I’m afraid we have known you far too long for that, my friend,” Volstagg said. “What truly occurred?”

Thor looked at those four, his dearest friends, those who had surely risked much to come to his aid here on Midgard. He swallowed the sudden surge of worry that he felt. They would not understand what had transpired, and he was not sure he did either. He did not have his brother’s skill to explain such a thing. “I have promised my brother my service, for as long as he desires it. I was… happy to offer it.”

“What?!” came the shout from three at once—even Hogun’s dark eyes went wide as an astonished murmur escaped.

“You cannot be serious!” Fandral said, seeming ready to grab him by both arms and shake.

Sif spoke then, her voice low and serious, cutting through the air of panic. “Thor, you must not do this.”

“It is already done,” Thor said, shrugging. “I gave him my word.”

Sif shook her head, her dark hair tossing back and forth like the tail of a whip. “No, Thor, there are things you do not yet know. Things you should understand. Loki has _tricked_ you into this.” She reached out to take his hands in hers, squeezing them as she looked into his eyes. She had grown up with Thor, and with Loki. She knew how close they were, and she also cared for them both, though she had become warier of Loki now than when they were all children—a wariness he had brought onto himself on many dire occasions. She also knew Thor would not wish to hear further evidence of his brother’s betrayals, but it was her duty to give it. “We know it was he who was behind the Jotun attack on the day of your ascension. He has likely orchestrated everything that has happened since then. Jotunheim—your banishment. You said yourself he had come to Midgard to deceive you once already. He nearly killed you with the Destroyer. You _must not_ do what he says.”

Thor smiled at her fondly. “Sif, you are a true friend. I am grateful for what you are trying to do. But you don’t realize... I know what Loki has done, and it does not matter.” At least, he had guessed at Loki’s involvement as soon as they had told him that Odin still lived. To bring the enemies of Asgard to the realm on the day of his coronation was _not_ like any prior trick of Loki’s, far darker and more malicious—yet still it held something of the same spirit, the same way of thinking. He felt a new stab of pain in the center of his being at the thought of what could have driven Loki to those depths. Coming back to himself, he looked into the faces of each of the friends arrayed around him. “In my time on Midgard, I have come to understand several things that I did not know before. I was not ready to be king and would have only brought disaster on the whole of the realm. I have not been the man I would wish to be. I have failed Loki as a brother. If this is how I must make up for those failures, I will do it.”

Sif still clutched his hands, but her grip fell slack as she saw the determination in his gaze. “We should return home,” she said, looking down at the dusty ground of Midgard, helpless anxiety written in the twist of her brow. “Before we are missed.”

And as soon as Thor bade his goodbyes to the mortals he had come to call friends, they did so, the rainbow light of the Bifrost streaming around them in the familiar, chaotic, soaring moment. It seemed to pull harder at Thor now than it ever had in the past, almost painful, bringing tears to his eyes as he landed on the golden floor of Heimdall’s observatory and found himself home.

Home and mortal, with Mjolnir a world away.

 

*

The space between all the realms was shadowy, filled with lingering mists in a labyrinth of tunnels winding along unimaginable paths, the capillaries of the World Tree. Long ago, Loki had forayed into them for the first time after finding a half-crumbled scroll in the depths of Asgard’s libraries; he had brushed away the thick layer of dust with a reverent hand, conjuring a witchlight over his shoulder to illuminate the bone-dry parchment, the wicks of the lamps in that forgotten room had long since rotted away. He doubted even Odin knew the secrets he read—as far as he could tell, no one else alive did—and he spent stolen hours learning the strange spells. He made his way into those places, finding that the very air seemed opaque and the back of his neck crept with the sense of being deep underground, and at first it was a thrill to travel on those roads no others had mastered. But over time the pleasure of it wore away. At some point he realized it galled him to be confined to them, scuttling in the shadows like an insect.

The only reason he still used them now, skulking in the shadows when the throne of Asgard was his, was that some small voice within him counseled caution: it would be too much, too soon, and too dangerous to confront Heimdall, who had always distrusted Loki. And he would have need of these hidden ways for only a little while longer after all.

He had already pushed his luck mere hours before, demanding the bridge’s guardian send him back to Jotunheim on the pretense of mending the broken peace. Heimdall’s oaths of fealty had held that far, at least, though suspicion gazed back from the depths of his eyes. Loki met it with a sharp smile.

On that trip the bridge had set him down some distance from his destination, and he had wandered alone and lost and small in that dead landscape, Asgard seeming more distant every second. The wind pricked him with crystals of ice, ruins looming oppressive as blue-black shadows above him.

He had not gone far before he could no longer resist ducking into the shadow of a broken tower, halting and holding up his hands in the gloom, peering at them. His life was not what he had always believed it to be. But he had seen the evidence of it only twice, and only briefly. One of those times, the first, was here.

He tried to remember how that had felt. He had been expecting pain, a frozen agony that had not come. Instead, a peculiar sensation, almost like warmth…

After a moment of focus the blue appeared, spreading up his arms and outward. Faint, curved, monstrous lines darkened. This time warmth blossomed beneath his breastbone, and he wondered, with detached curiosity, how bruises would look against the blue and whether such chilled flesh would burn.

He did not want to be this thing. But many mysteries of his life began to make sense, if this was what he had always been.

When he started to tremble uncontrollably he banished the blue once again, shoving that part of himself away violently and emerging from the shadows with his composure restored and his accustomed form upon him, leaving no trace.

He had made his way swiftly after that, finding Laufey upon his icy throne and standing before the monster who sired him, a secretive smile on his lips, luring him with the promise of the casket.

And he had led them through into the grey in-between spaces and instructed them to wait for him there, for him to come back and open the door on the other side. Several of the Jotnar had grumbled at that—the one he had heard called Helblindi, who spoke to Laufey as only a son speaks to a king (Loki realized this made Helblindi his sibling; the thought made him shudder), had demanded to know what they were to do if he failed to return. Laufey had given Helblindi a sharp look. But Loki had only reassured them, all obsequious smiles. “You needn’t worry about that. But I’m sure you could follow your own trail back to Jotunheim and come out no worse than you began, if you were to decide to turn back.”

Now he rushed back to that spot. He had kept them waiting far, far longer than he had intended.

When he reached it, he peered around into the empty mists, perplexed, brow knitted. After a moment, he wandered off in what seemed a likely direction with a dismayed sigh. It was only barely possible that they would find the last stretch of the way to Asgard on their own. Loki went along the twisting passages at a brisk trot, ducking briefly as the passage dipped, leaping over a deep trench like a wrinkle in the ground. He slung himself around corners and slipped through narrow squeezes. Once or twice he thought he heard footsteps or the rustle of a dozen large beings moving, but he spun and saw no one. But then at last—

“Wait,” he called out after their disappearing backs just before the final one vanished into the haze.

He mastered his breathing as he came to the front of their small group, passing by the muttering Helblindi, and he even gave the Jotun king a little bow as he felt himself being looked over warily from behind blood-red eyes.  
  
“Did something happen, Asgardian? You were gone long, and you seem… distracted,” Laufey said, his voice a low rumble from lips that barely seemed to move as he spoke.  
  
“Yes, many things. None of them important to our business,” Loki said, baring his teeth in a little smile. “I hope you aren’t having second thoughts, as I’d hate to have to find some other use for a certain Jotun relic.”  
  
Laufey’s eyes narrowed. “Lead us,” was all the Jotun king said.

Loki grinned. “It’s just this way, then. Follow me.”

*

The air of that wing of the palace where Odin slept was silent and still. Walls of dull gold dancing with the torchlight flicker teasing back the shadows. And, though no guard should have been near at that part of the hour, Loki walked a few steps ahead of the Frost Giants, just to be certain.

Stalking through this enemy stronghold, the Jotnar were utterly silent; enough so that Loki could not help but glance behind him when the sound of only his own quiet footsteps grew too unsettling. Their breaths were cold and their bodies no doubt likewise, but they did not freeze everything they touched, though Loki had almost expected to see frost spidering across the floors at their steps. Perhaps, he thought, lip twitching, that did not happen unless they chose to.

At last they came to the final corner before the doors to Odin’s chamber, and there Loki halted before rounding it. He held up a hand, not daring to speak even in a whisper, and then made a gesture he hoped the Jotnar would understand. _Around this corner, a door. Behind it…_

He waited for the nearest of them to nod, and then Loki took a tentatively pace forward to make sure that the way was clear. And heard the sound of footsteps, carelessly loud and coming nearer.

He stood frozen with his fingers splayed in a low warning as a shadow came into view trailing down the corridor. It took a moment to recognize the man as one of Odin’s—no, now his own—councilors bustling toward him, a sudden intent look lighting up on his face like a dog that’s seen its quarry.

“Ah! King Loki,” the man said. “I hoped I might find you here.”

Cursing inside, Loki stepped quickly forward, plastering a false smile upon his lips. “Rannver.” Rannver was the sort who sought the sound of his own voice reflecting back from important ears like the sea’s roar from a seashell. “You’ve just caught me on my way out. Walk with me, then—this way, please—and say what it is you need.”

By the time Loki had extricated himself and made his way back to that corridor, the Jotnar were nowhere to be seen.


	2. Chapter 2

In a chamber beyond wide doors, watched over by two silent ravens, the Allfather slept his long sleep under a blanket of golden light in which countless motes hung in slow suspension. The last time Loki had been in that room, he had sat at the bedside opposite Frigga as she spoke of the purposefulness of Odin’s every action, whether the theft of a Jotun infant or the banishment of his own firstborn. She had explained that Odin’s lies had been meant to protect him, and she had offered hope for the restoration of their entire family, and he had believed her. He had looked into her eyes, the mother he still loved dearly, as she inclined her head and called him her king. And when she told him to make his father proud, his thoughts had been completely calm above the turmoil of his emotions. He had known exactly what he had to do.

Now he stood frozen, staring at the door that had been left very slightly ajar, not daring to take another step. Though the hallway was silent, he felt certain that the Jotun soldiers had sneaked within while he was luring thrice-damned Rannver away, and all he had to do was burst inside and slay them, saving his father’s life.

But the plan had changed.

Perhaps it had always been folly to think he could win his father’s approval by such a deed. Perhaps it had been folly to think that doing so would get him anything he wanted. It certainly would not change what he now knew of himself, the secret of his parentage that Odin had kept from him. Moreover, somewhere out in the city Thor was making his way home, and the agreement they had struck would be ended in an instant if Odin awoke.

So would not the idea of a son avenging his father’s death, rather than preventing it, resonate just as well with the people of Asgard? Would it not win him the invaluable coin of their acceptance? Was this not _exactly_ what he needed to make this plan work?

All he had to do was linger here in the hall, listening, until the worst was over. All he had to do was delay just a little bit, just as if he were not there, as if he did not know. All he had to do was close his eyes and wait.

Frigga’s scream came ringing from behind those doors in the next instant, and Loki was in motion before he had even made the conscious choice.

Rounding the corner and bursting through the open doors, he saw Frigga near the bed, a sword fallen beside her and a Jotun soldier looming above her, but her eyes, horror-filled, were fixed on the figure on the bed. Loki followed her gaze to the red stain spreading out from the center of Odin’s sleeping chest.

And above him the Jotun king, the blade in his hand dripping, blood melting ruts into the ice.

Loki stared at this scene with eyes wide. Then he raised Gungnir, its gleaming point filling the center of his vision. Without a thought, with a wordless shout of rage, he used it.

Its power roared.

The Jotun who threatened Frigga was the first to fall. That was enough to make Laufey turn, and red eyes looked up at Loki in disbelief as he stepped forward, the weapon clenched tight in his hands.

“What is this?” the Jotun king demanded.

Loki did not answer but only plunged the blade into the blue expanse of Laufey’s chest, a killing wound to mirror the deep puncture in the Allfather’s chest. Another silent Jotun approached from behind; Loki spun in time to cut him down, and his face pulled into a grimace that was nothing like a smile when he saw who he had killed. _I have room in me for mercy upon only one brother,_ he thought with dark humor, _and you come too late today, Helblindi._

The Frost Giants that remained perished as they tried to bolt away from their treacherous ally, and not even ash was left of them.

The hum in Loki’s ears was fitfully replaced by Frigga’s cries as she knelt beside Odin’s bleeding body, calling for aid, calling for Loki, crying Odin’s name. And then the room was filling with people, guards and healers rushing all around him, and Loki let the spear fall from his grasp. His face was wet, and when he wiped his hand across his eyes he was somehow surprised to find it was only tears.

*

It was minutes later, but seemed an eternity, when Frigga wrapped her arms around Loki and pulled him close. She was still weeping, though it was a slower fall of tears now. As the healers swarmed around the stricken Allfather, one had gently moved Loki and Frigga away, murmuring that they would do everything within their power to save him but that the family should wait nearby and not torment themselves with the sight. So now they stood together in an antechamber, alone in a silence that seemed edged with the whisper of whatever was occurring on the other side of the door.

“I'm so sorry, Mother, I came too late,” Loki said, “This is all my fault.”

“No,” she replied softly, and she didn’t release him from her embrace but tightened it. “Don’t say that, Loki.”

He knew what he was going to say next. He knew what he would admit, and why. And he knew it would get him what he wanted. But the words caught in his throat until he swallowed and steadied himself.

“You do not understand, Mother. I brought them here.”

Frigga did pull away at that but only to look into his eyes, seeming more concerned than horrified. “What do you mean, Loki?” She brushed her fingers through the fringe of his hair. “I’m sure you had nothing to do with it. If you fear that somehow, because of what you learned…”

He stopped her, shaking his head. “No, you don’t understand. I _did_. I brought them. It was only meant to be a trick, you see… I wanted to ruin Thor’s big day, and I showed them the way in… I thought I had sealed that pathway afterward.” He took a breath, halting. “I did not mean for this to happen. But it is my fault.” His eyes stung—it was just true enough for that.

Frigga’s hand halted for only a moment, though, as she stroked tenderly along his arm.

“Oh, Loki,” she said, voice filled with something half between disappointment and pity.

“I know that what I _meant_ does not matter now,” he said softly. “Whatever you think I deserve, I will accept your judgment.”

Frigga had always been the kindest of judges. Not blind, but able to see into the hearts of men and gods enough to know that those who are hurting do not always choose the wisest courses. And now she looked at Loki as if she were hurting with him, no matter what he had done.

“I know you would never have meant to cause this,” she said at last, her hands squeezing his in determined sympathy as she drew from the seemingly boundless well of her forgiveness. “And I do not see what any punishment could mend.”

“Thank you, Mother,” he said. “Yet there is more I must confess to you.” His eyes flitted hesitantly to her face. “I have brought Thor home.”

“You have?” Frigga said in surprise, gasping. “Is he all right? How? When was this?”

“Just a little while ago.” He almost smiled, ruefully, pained, but then his mouth twisted and his voice came out hard as ice. “I took the Destroyer to Midgard when I went to find him. I wanted to frighten him. I wanted him to see that for once he would have to do as _I_ wished. But it didn’t turn out like that. As soon as I found him…”

Frigga sought out his eyes, but whatever she saw, she only nodded and urged him on.

“When I found him I knew I had to bring him home. But he had not won back the hammer; he is still just as a mortal. I thought that I would bring him here and wait until Odin awakes, so that he could restore what has been taken from my brother.” Loki trailed off and glanced toward the door behind which the Allfather lay bleeding, perhaps dying. “But now, what will happen if Father…”

Frigga hushed him, placing a hand against his cheek. “It will not come to that. And anyway, you have brought your brother home to be with us again. That much, at least, is good.”

He leaned into her touch, his eyes falling shut. “Yes, it is, and I am glad. But I still feel no different. I cannot stand the thought that it will all go back to the way it was. I do not want him to have the throne—I do not want to just stand aside and let him take all the glory, as he always does. I know I should not care, I know I have made a mess of everything, but…”

He stopped himself, biting back the bitter words and turning his face away. Frigga said nothing. When he spoke again it was in a shaky whisper.

“You should rule. Take the scepter; you can rule as we wait for Odin to wake. I won’t let him have it, but I should not have it either. I don’t deserve it. You are better suited to it than either of us.”

Frigga studied him, and for a moment he thought she would pull him into another embrace, but she didn’t.

“No, Loki. I won’t do that. You have made mistakes,” she said firmly, “but if you want to prove yourself, do so by repairing them, as I know you can. I have faith in _you_. You will rule until Odin awakens, my son. And you will watch over your brother, now that he is mortal among us, and maybe that will help you both to see each other more clearly, as you once did. Promise me only that you will do that. That you will protect him, and let yourself forgive him.”

When he nodded she did pull him close again, and with his mother pressed against him he felt mingled satisfaction and shock, like an unsteady twinge in the core of him, at how easy it had been to convince her.

Now even if anyone accused him, she would take his side. He supposed he should have felt some guilt over that, but he didn’t.

As they parted she took in his anxious look, the brows drawn together, and patted his hand once more until he gave her a ghost of a smile.

Just then, there was a low, long groan of hinges as the door opened and one of the healers stepped through it, face solemn and grim.

*

It had been one thing to be mortal on Midgard, Thor thought, where that had made him no different from any other around him—and after all, he had retained the knowledge of an Asgardian, the skills gained through centuries of life, and attitudes and confidence of one raised to command, and those things had set him apart and above. But now, to be mortal in Asgard… a heavy and uncomfortable feeling settled in the pit of his stomach, growing stronger with every person they passed who looked at him strangely, recognizing their banished prince returned but _feeling_ that he was no longer one of them in some deep and crucial way. After so long of looking into their eyes to find admiration and respect, of being able to gauge in that reflection how brightly his light shone, it was disconcerting to find now that he could not. Some part of him had been lost, leaving an emptiness behind.

Nonetheless, he was home, and the parts that remained were glad of that.

In the company of his friends he made his way back to Odin’s hall, but it was slow going—as slow as Nidhogg’s progress, as if his friends thought if they delayed long enough, his promise to Loki would _expire_. Volstagg and Fandral acted particularly jolly through it all, joking and telling ridiculous old tales of their exploits together, horrendously exaggerated as was their wont. Hogun’s wary silence was not unexpected, either. But Sif stayed close by his side, stonefaced and alert as a guard. That was strange, and it cast all the rest in a different light.

They were afraid for him, he realized. But he did not quite understand why; surely they had not thought him so helpless when he had gone to face the Destroyer, and to them at least he was surely still the same friend they had known since their younger days, whether mortal or god.

“It will all be all right,” he said to Sif. “You needn’t worry for my sake.”

She gave him a nod, but a moment later he caught the look she shared with Hogun behind his back, and he gritted his teeth. They meant well by it. They were his dearest friends, and they were merely concerned for him.

“I know you believe I am being a fool, but I _have_ wronged Loki. What would I be if I did not at least attempt to make redress for that?” he insisted as they continued to treat him thus strangely as they walked.

Sif gave a bark of laughter. “Redress? What he has asked of you is no decent redress, even if he had any true grievances. He is simply jealous of you, as he has always been.”

Thor fell silent, though not out of agreement. Loki’s envy of him had almost been a jest among them before, and once—only a few days ago—he would have heard Sif’s words as a confirmation of his own worthiness. Now they stung, both on his brother’s behalf and because he knew how far he was from worthy. They did not see it, but he knew it now. He would not still be mortal if it were not true.

“Perhaps that is grievance enough,” he said, mostly to himself.

Before Sif could reply, Volstagg happened to bustle back between them, throwing a heavy arm around Thor’s shoulders and attempting to draw him into a discussion of the merits of a particular ale they’d tasted on one journey decades ago.

But then, in the midst of a wide, statue-lined street, there came the cry of a young foot-messenger calling out news as he flew.

_The Frost Giants had invaded the realm once more. Odin had been attacked as he lay in the Odinsleep. Odin Allfather was dying._

Thor listened, blanching as he tried to make sense of the impossible words, halting so suddenly that Volstagg glanced back surprised.

Then he ran then, as swift as if he were a god still, and the others had to struggle to keep up.

*

“Other business to attend to indeed!” Sif shouted as they ran, weapons and armor clattering, her face red with anger and exertion. “Thor, please forgive me for saying that next I have a chance, I will teach your brother to rue the day of his birth, and he will be lucky to come out with his head intact!”

“I doubt you will be the first in line, Sif,” Fandral called out, to which Hogun grunted in agreement.

Volstagg puffed and panted from several paces behind them. “I’m usually not one… to convict a man… without… evidence… but I must say I agree. It certainly… looks suspicious… at least.”

“I know,” Thor muttered, though he did not slow and was not sure they heard. “I know how it appears. And if it is true, Sif, I will not stand in your way.” But inside he did not believe. Though he did wonder where Loki had gone off to, he knew well enough that Loki often _looked_ guilty when he wasn’t, merely through the perils of a habit toward mischief and hidden plans. And this—he could not believe his brother capable of such evil.

But most of all, he had little thought to spare for anything else than the sudden vision of his father lying wounded or perhaps already dead, and knowing that he had not been there. He had been unable to do anything to intervene.

He ran pleading with the fates for a chance to speak to him, to admit to his father that he had been wrong, to thank him for his guidance; he ran hoping for the chance to show Odin that he had learned to be _better_ than he was before. And he thought of his mother and pushed himself harder. Loki could not have been behind this; he would not do this to their family. Even with the fresh memory of the hiss of Loki’s voice and the brittle look in his eyes as they stood under the sun of Midgard and made their bargain, Thor did not believe his brother would do this.

Their feet pounded against the ground as they sped through Asgard. And then the doors to the palace were swung wide before them, the guards bowing to Thor—there, at least, his claim to respect and belonging was unquestioned—and they were within, being pointed toward Odin’s chambers. At that door, however, he turned to the others.

“I must go forth alone from here,” he said. He did not know what he would find, but if Odin lay dying, then it was first a place for those of his kin. They gave him nods and sympathetic glances and raised their hands in farewell.

“We will wait, then, in case you should need us,” Volstagg said, folding his arms across his vast middle and appearing ready to wait out Ragnarok if necessary.

“Thank you, my friends,” Thor said as he opened the door and stepped through it.

*

Loki stood shrouded in the shadows in one corner of Odin’s chambers, leaning against a pillar, shoulders slouched and head hanging weary. He and Frigga had finally been permitted within, with a healer’s caution that Odin’s injury was severe and nothing was yet certain, and together in silence they had entered that chamber—the very same as where he had lain in Odinsleep, though no sign of blood or of the battle that had taken place remained. The bodies of Laufey and Helblindi had been taken away (though to where exactly Loki did not know and had a thought to inquire later).

Frigga waited for the doors to shut behind them before she took hold of Loki’s hand and stepped forward, her fingers digging almost painfully into his palm as they saw.

Odin lay with his eye closed and sunken in a face scrawled over with deep lines, as if he had aged terribly in that one hour. The wound on his chest was bound cleanly and expertly, the bandage bright, clean white against the pallor of sickly grey skin. Dark streaks of bruise sneaked out around the edges. Loki watched—Odin’s chest seemed not to rise for breath almost until Loki began to fear that it would not again.

Frigga’s hand fell away as she sank into a seat beside the bed and sat with her back held carefully straight, simply staring.

Loki took a place beside her, but all too soon was captured by restlessness until he simply had to stand and put distance between himself and the figure on the bed, between him and his grieving mother.

He got up, paced a few steps away and then, feeling as if he might suffocate, the air too thin in his lungs, he leaned his head back against a curve of cold marble and closed his eyes. Days before, Odin had crumpled to the ground, into the Odinsleep, struck down by the blunt weapon of Loki’s rage. He remembered his father at his feet, and how only after the final words escaped his mouth had he seen the hand that groped for his or heard the feeble whisper for help as Odin sank against the dark stairs. Shock and panic had gripped him, making him almost lightheaded.

He felt the same now, but it was only a matter of habit. He had spent so long hoping someday to live up to what Odin wished him to be. He clenched his fists at his side: if he would ever have what he desired, it would not come through such patient, pathetic, weakling hope. He would never have been able to earn Odin’s approval; he had been meant to scrape for every hint of it for the rest of his life, never knowing. Odin would never have told him. He would have just gone on believing he had been passed over because of his own failings.

With a deep breath Loki sneaked a glance around the side of the pillar at his mother sitting just as she had been.

He was sorry for her sake. But not enough to regret it. She had always loved him, but her love had not helped him, and now at last he understood why. He was not the first to bring a monster into Asgard. Whatever ghosts of sentiment he felt certainly would not cause him to change his plans.

He was still there, his back to the column, when a clatter rang out beyond the doors as they were flung open. Thor burst into the room, his eyes wide and seeking.

Loki peered from the shadows as Frigga stood and rushed across the room toward him.

“Thor, oh Thor, my son!” she said, her slender arms going around his shoulders. She squeezed him in an embrace then stopped, retreating enough to look up at him, lips parted around a question she didn’t seem able to form.

Thor was changed, and he saw her hesitate as she felt it. Thor was—different. Diminished, as if he had once been a blazing bonfire and was now the tiny flicker atop a candle, weak and shaky in the gloom. He was still the son she loved, yet he was not. Her brow twisted in worry, a twinge of loss: the man before her was mortal, a fleeting life like countless others, and she could sense it in him just as Loki could.

But as Loki watched, fingers pressed to his mouth, she shook her unease away and embraced him once more. “You have returned, as I knew you would.”

“What has happened?” Thor asked, his face pressed against the gold of her hair, his own blond dulled beside it. “Is Father… do they say he will live?”

Frigga pulled back, a frown drawing the darkness under her eyes even deeper. “He is alive for now. The healers are uncertain, though, what tomorrow will bring. The wound was deep and badly placed, and the nature of the injury… the ice…” She shook her head. “We do not know yet.”

“So the messenger spoke truly; it was a Jotun attack,” Thor said, and his jaw tensed as if for a vengeance he was no longer suited to take.

“Yes,” said Frigga. “It was. Your brother stopped them, but too late to prevent this.”

Thor followed the line of her gaze to the form that lay flat and motionless in the center of the room. On unsteady legs he went to the edge of the bed, staring down blindly. And he sank to his knees there and wept, head bowed into his hands, hair falling down as a ragged veil.

Loki approached with silent steps. “The healers say that he may not awaken for some time,” he said, putting a hand on his brother’s trembling shoulder. At the touch, Thor turned his head to look up at Loki. His eyes were red and puffy and damp, the lashes clumped wetly together.

“Loki,” he said, and it was a plea and an accusation.

Loki met his gaze, steady and calm, his fingers curling just a little tighter. To Frigga standing nearby, watching them, he said, “Will you stay with Father tonight? Will you send for us if there is any change?”

Frigga nodded, looking over them both with sorrow, seeming somehow smaller than she ever had before. She still held herself straight and proud, but it was a resolve that seemed ready to crumble.

“It has been a long day for us all,” Loki went on in a murmur. “But I would speak with my brother before it is over, if that is all right.”

“Yes, go,” Frigga answered. “Make peace with each other.”

Her eyes stayed on Odin’s face as they departed.

*

On the other side of the door waited the Warriors Three and Sif, springing to their feet at the sound of their approach through the antechamber. As they emerged, the four took in the sight of King Loki walking with his arm around his unresisting brother, both their faces drawn with grief. Each took an unconscious step backward as Loki returned their look with an icy stare, and they did not retrace it when Thor looked up as well, giving them no more than a small, sad-eyed nod in greeting.

The two paused.

“Odin is alive but badly wounded. Frigga remains with him. All we can do now is hope,” Thor said in a hollow voice. And then Loki led him away, unmistakably guiding and supporting him although they leaned on each other.

Once the brothers were gone, the four friends shared a look. This was definitely not a positive development.


	3. Chapter 3

As they left Odin’s chambers, Thor realized he truly did feel weary, a fatigue from deep within as if his bones might crumble to dust and his sinews give out. It seemed impossible that the day had begun on Jane Foster’s rooftop, under the fading stars of Midgard. But if Loki noticed how his head drooped on his shoulders or how he leaned on his brother’s arm for support, he gave no sign.

The weariness was overlaid upon a worse uncertainty, and all at once Thor could stand it no longer.

Halting sharply and grabbing Loki by the sleeve, Thor opened his mouth and forced out the words. “Loki, the Frost Giants… did you… how did they get into the realm? This time and the last. Please, I… I need to know.” The back of Thor’s neck prickled as he asked it, as Loki stopped next to him, lips pressed into a thin line, glancing down the darkened hallway.

“Are you asking if I brought the Jotnar into Asgard to kill Father? No, Thor, of course I didn’t; what sort of monster do you think I am?” Loki said in a bland murmur, barely sparing him a glance. “Letting them in to spoil your coronation was my doing; I will admit to that. But today was an unintended consequence. I suppose they’re not quite as stupid as I thought.”

Beside him, Thor tried to form words and found himself unable—he already knew it was true, but to hear Loki confess it so casually, as if it barely mattered what had come of his actions… he stared at his brother in frank amazement.

Seeing his look, Loki hissed and brushed his hand away with a quick, sharp gesture. “Do not forget your promise, Thor, and do not attempt to make me feel guilty for this. _Your_ reckless stupidity has almost led to deaths many a time—once only a few days ago, if you recall—and _you_ always expected to be lauded for it.” His voice was low as a threat, and he did look at him then, fiercely, the green of his eyes almost black.

And then the moment passed and Loki flickered a strained smile at him. “But we have other things to worry about now, brother. I suspect we have much to do before we will be allowed to rest. The people of Asgard are surely in an uproar by now, and we cannot leave them to rumor and suspicion all night, can we?” Loki said, and he took the horned helmet from under his arm and slid it onto his head before they started off again.

Of course Thor had not forgotten their bargain or his promise. For the past several hours it had been pushed to the back of his mind, where it hummed as a current flowing under his thoughts, a niggling question that he was still trying to understand. He knew why he had agreed to it: he had done so because it was the only way to protect the mortals of Puente Antiguo, the only way he could defend his friends. But also—and just as important—because it was the only way to get Loki to _stop_ so Thor could try to help him.

Loki now gave no sign of the storm of anger Thor had seen in him on Midgard, exuding only calm determination as they walked the rest of the way side by side in silence. That, in a way, was troubling. Thor had never been able to fathom Loki’s ability to conceal his feelings and intentions so completely, could not grasp that sort of deception or why Loki thought it necessary, but he knew Loki did so. And this anger—Loki must have been hiding it for years, and Thor had never caught an inkling of it. So how was he to heal wounds that his brother would not admit to having? How was he to help Loki when he hid so much of himself away?

And how would he do so in the midst of whatever Loki might be planning himself?

Thor did not believe Loki had tried to get their father killed, but that didn’t mean Loki would not take advantage of the situation. Loki was hurt and angry and driven to the edge. He might do any sort of drastic thing to strike back at the one who had wounded him. Loki had made him promise to obey him—but what exactly that would mean Thor did not know and almost feared to guess.

Thor was still thinking of this, nervously, as he followed Loki into the throne room, where he was struck with the hush louder than any he had ever heard, the chaos of a near-silent susurrus. He had not been in that room since the day he had been meant to step into Odin’s place as ruler of Asgard. He had last seen it thronged with people shouting his name. Now the assembled councilors and courtiers watched them with uncertain expectation, looking back and forth between them, each trying to hold a respectful silence while at the same time clamoring to hear what they would say.

 _Was the news of a Jotun attack on the sleeping king of Asgard accurate? Had Odin perished? Was Loki still ruling in his stead, even though the elder son had returned from banishment?_ _And_ —here was the question buzzing just beneath the silence— _was there to be war?_

Loki took up a place before them, his hands spread in a gesture for calm, drawn up to his full height. Loki had never seemed so tall before—or Thor had never noticed, thinking of him always as younger, shorter, smaller, even if they had perhaps been eye to eye for centuries. Loki had never seemed so regal, from the set of his shoulders to the expressive calm he exuded. Thor stood near him, and he watched as quiet fell across the room like a wave. The gathered crowd still boiled with tension, but for a moment every breath was held.

“The Allfather,” Loki said, his voice carrying easily throughout the hall without him seeming to raise it, “has indeed been gravely wounded in a cowardly attack by a handful of enemy soldiers. At this hour he lives still, and we must all trust to the fates and to the skill of our healers that he will remain so. We can also take comfort in the knowledge that those who committed this terrible act have already met a swift and final justice.”

As Thor watched, the waters before them cooled ever so slightly. A few in the crowd nodded, slow but willing. The rest waited for whatever Loki would say next. And Thor bit his own lip, wondering what he might have said if he had been the one to speak in that moment. Once he would have said no words at all to such a gathering—he would have already been halfway to Jotunheim with an army, reckless and eager for bloodshed. His father had been right. Loki had been right.

Loki did speak of armies, but only to say that any decisions regarding war would wait until the truth of the situation could become clearer, and this was just enough to satisfy both those who clamored for it and those who dreaded its terrible expense.

“Yes, but who will be making those decisions?” came the question from one of the old warriors at the front of the crowd, with a shrewd look between them.

“Ah,” Loki said with a smile.

And here it would come, a perfect opportunity for Loki to humiliate him, to retaliate for—Thor now realized—years of having seen himself passed over and ignored. For having to stand aside, barely noticed in the shadows, as Thor rallied the cheers of what seemed the entire realm for his coronation. He could not help the shuddering wince that crawled through him, and he nearly shut his eyes to block out what would come.

He was shaken out of it by a hand gripping his shoulder warmly, and the sound of his name. Loki’s eyes were on him, and his lips curved in a smile soft but genuine.

“… returned to us, and that is our brightest hope on this dark day. No matter what has happened, my brother is still a prince of Asgard, and I would be a fool not to wish for his aid and counsel, now more than ever. He will serve as my advisor until such time as his powers are restored or until Odin awakens.”

Thor stared at him as the crowd’s last mutters of stolen crown died swiftly away.

*

It took nearly the entire walk back to Loki’s chambers before Thor finally managed to sputter out the question he clearly needed to ask.

“So would you have had me tell them all of our arrangement?” Loki replied, wryly amused. “I don’t think your pride could have stood that, brother.”

“But… today you sent the Destroyer to kill me, and now you smile and say that… and act as if nothing happened!”

Loki could not help but laugh. “Oh, my dear Thor. Did you expect I would make you kneel at my feet as I sit on our father’s throne? Did you expect I would parade you through Asgard on a leash? I suppose it’s a good thing _one_ of us has heard of the concepts of subtlety and restraint.”

Thor gave him a look that could only be described as crestfallen.

Subtlety and restraint—and patience. Odin had always tried to teach it to Thor and had never succeeded, but Loki was capable of the patience of a spider in a web. He’d had to be;it was the only thing that had enabled him to make it through this long day, knowing that if only he could bring the Jotnar to Odin’s chambers without arousing suspicion, lie to Frigga well enough to gain her support, deflect his brother’s annoying and noisy friends, and convince the people of Asgard to follow his rule for at least a while longer, he would have everything he wanted. (And if his vision had blurred vengeance-red upon seeing Odin’s spilled blood, and if he had dampened his mother’s shoulder with true tears, and if the look in Sif’s eyes had actually stung him… no one needed to know it.)

And now he’d won, and nothing any longer stood in his way. Thor was his to do with as he wished, to rule over as a tyrant even as he gave his brother the illusion of choice, to torment for his own pleasure as Thor had for so long unwittingly tormented him.

Thor was still watching him in confusion, brow scrunched, trying to work through it all. “So… how will it be, then? Brother, what do you want me to do?”

Loki took in the sight of him, and he licked his lips and smiled.

*

“Loki?” Thor asked again when Loki did not answer. He had moved to sit by the banked fire when they came into Loki’s chambers. And now Loki finished making himself a bit more comfortable, removing his armor and slipping off his boots, and came to sit beside him, joining him in gazing into the low flames and listening to their hiss and crackle. After a few moments he turned slightly toward Thor and drew one knee up casually so he could rest his folded arms on it. The ruddy glow of firelight on his features made his expression seem to shift.

Ever since that moment in the desert, when Thor had realized how terribly hurt Loki was and how much cause he truly had to feel so, he had been trying to think how he could make amends to him. How he could get Loki to understand that he was sorry. He knew it would be hard; Loki had never been one to let go of things easily. But he was determined, and maybe now he would have a chance.

Thor looked at his brother, who was still gazing at him calmly.

“Loki,” he began, gathering himself. “I know now that I have been blind to you. I know you have every right to be angry with me, and I do not regret swearing my promise to you today. But I would—”

Loki lifted a hand, cutting him off. “No, Thor. We’re not doing this your way.”

Thor frowned. “I don’t understand, Loki. I meant only to…”

But Loki ignored him, unfolding himself and moving closer. “How does it feel to be mortal?”

This brought Thor up short. He had been trying not to think of it, to pretend it away even though it was like having a hole in the center of his chest, a missing part of himself and he could not look down at himself without glimpsing it. But the truth was that it felt wretched. He swallowed. “It is strange,” he admitted. “And uncomfortable.”

Loki nodded, head turned to stare again into the fire. Only the edge of his grin was visible. “I’m not surprised. Exactly the same as you were, yet not. Once the strongest of us, but no longer. It must be terrible.”

Thor felt his shoulders dipping around heartache, for despite his expression, Loki’s voice was low, sad, full of sympathy, and Thor suddenly realized that it was a voice Loki had used on him many times before. Now he wondered if perhaps it had always been a deception.

“Loki…” Thor began.

Then Loki looked fully at him, and Thor was shocked by the blaze in Loki’s eyes that had nothing to do with the tame fire that flickered opposite them. “You have no idea, Thor,” Loki hissed. “You have no idea how much I have envied you, and you have no idea how much I have hated you, and you have no idea how much I wished to kill you today. And I could have.” Loki put one hand against his chest, leaned closer until he could feel the warmth of Loki’s breath on his skin. “Do you know why I refrained? It was because I realized… I couldn’t bear to claim victory over you and not even have you live to know you had been beaten.”

“Loki, I’m sorry for making you—” Thor began, but before he could finish the thought Loki’s hand was tangled in his hair, wrenching him even closer, and he could _hear_ the sharp-toothed smile in Loki’s words.

“Oh, Thor, how sorry you are, how dearly you love me, how badly you wish to save me. How kind you are to me, o mighty Thor! But you haven’t understood yet. I will show you. I will teach you your place, brother.”

And as Loki said it, Thor suddenly understood, suddenly knew what Loki intended. Thor’s heart was pounding, and he was suddenly terribly aware of the nearness of Loki’s body, and the world fell away under his feet as his brother’s mouth pressed hard against his.

Thor’s breath stopped in his throat as Loki kissed him with one hand still twined in Thor’s hair and the other wrapping around his torso to drag him closer against himself. It was all he could do to bring his hands up between them in a futile gesture, taking hold of Loki’s arms but unable to shift him even an inch.

Loki was his brother—this was not…

He managed to pull away at least enough to speak. “Loki, stop—don’t,” he heard himself pleading. He knew he didn’t want… not like this.

To his surprise, Loki let him jerk away then, one hand lingering briefly to stroke against Thor’s jaw as he scooted backward. Thor stared at him in horror, lips moving though he couldn’t force out a single sound.

“Going back on your word so soon, Thor?” Loki asked, tilting his head and smirking. “You have changed.”

Thor felt himself flushing as he looked Loki in the eye. “I did not think you would…” Loki—the brother Thor had always loved, whose love Thor had always relied upon—truly meant to do this, out of bitter vengeance, to punish him. And Loki was giving him a chance to refuse—but if he did, it would be all the excuse Loki needed to cast him aside forever. He swallowed hard, still almost feeling Loki’s fingers trailing softly against where his pulse raced.

“You said ‘anything.’ You promised to give me whatever I wanted.” Loki went on, spreading his hands before himself. “ _This_ is what I’m asking for right now. Are you breaking your vow?”

Chest heaving with unsteady breaths, Thor shook his head defiantly, felt the muscles in his clenched jaw shift.

“Good,” Loki said as he moved to follow. The hard back of the bench on which they sat pressed into Thor’s shoulders, leaving no retreat, and he felt almost frozen as Loki moved to kneel astride him. Loki’s long fingers found his wrists and wrapped around them, forcing them up and pinning them at his sides, and then Thor’s eyes widened as Loki leaned close to kiss him again in a way that was surely deliberately suggestive, Loki’s tongue invading his mouth in quick, wet, lewd motions, Loki’s soft moans vibrating against his lips. Thor felt himself squirming but could not help it, and when Loki finally drew back from the kiss, Thor was left reeling, panting, a storm of helpless confusion inside him.

“Shh, it’s all right,” Loki said, the words coming out breathy, lustful, a brush of heat against Thor’s cheek. “You can try to fight me off if you like. If it would make you feel better. Then you’ll know for certain that there’s nothing you can do but obey me. Go on. Fight me, brother.”

Thor stared at him, his entire body quivering with tension. And then he broke.

Loki had not been able to pin him for centuries—for all that time their wrestling bouts had only ended with Loki on the ground, scowling in defeat, and Thor laughing good-naturedly above him. That had been true with enough certainty that Loki could hardly ever be goaded into sparring against him in that manner anymore—and that memory was called to Thor’s mind now as he began to struggle, desperately, the muscles in his arms straining and twitching against the powerful force Loki exerted. Loki was so much stronger than him now that his hold was overwhelming, and Thor was truly helpless against it. He twisted and bucked, but he succeeded not in throwing Loki off—only in pressing his hips against his brother in a way that made tense heat gather inside him and made him all the more aware of Loki’s fingers curling tender and immovable around his wrists as if he couldn’t get enough of the feel of Thor made weak and mortal in his grasp.

Thor choked back a whimper as he felt himself hardening as well.

Thor stopped his futile struggle only when he was panting, breathless, tears of exhaustion stinging in his eyes. Loki took advantage of his stillness by tucking his face into the hollow of Thor’s neck, licking away sweat. His mouth clamped down on Thor’s throat, nipping and sucking to bruise. “I quite liked that. I think I prefer you like this, brother,” he said against damp skin. “Will you struggle again when I take you?”

“Loki, please,” Thor begged in a shattered murmur, and Loki did not deign to reply, being already absorbed in sliding his hands under Thor’s clothes, preparing to remove them.

Thor gasped when Loki’s hand found his erection, fingers playing along its sides for a moment before wrapping fully around it; he whimpered again and could not hold back a moan as Loki dragged his thumb through the wetness at the tip and traced down past the head, rubbing little circles.

Loki made a softly amused sound at that just before claiming Thor’s mouth once more.

Thor couldn’t pretend not to understand what Loki wanted from him, why Loki wanted _this_. He knew Loki was doing this to hurt him, to demean and humiliate him. Loki was doing this because it pleased him that Thor was at his mercy, unable to resist; it pleased him to have Thor under his power. And Thor was going to go willingly, to be cut down by the one he loved most, welcoming the sacrifice, falling to his knees. Every part of Thor’s body thrummed with nervous anticipation.

Strong fingers pulled away the grey Midgardian shirt he still wore and stroked along the planes of his chest and stomach, and Thor could not keep himself from squirming at the touch. Then Loki moved back off him and looped his fingers on the waist of the black Midgardian trousers, tugging them easily down and pulling them off, leaving his bottom half bare as well.

And then Thor was being pushed down onto his back, and Loki shoved his knees apart and slid between them.

In the dim, ruddy glow of the fire, Thor stared up at his brother gazing hungrily down at him, and he felt molten heat in his belly curling and whipping outward, and he felt a rising wave of terror. Loki’s lips were slack, his pupils black and huge, his shoulders rising and falling heavily, and Thor knew what was going to happen next. He had never done this. And he had never imagined having his brother like this. If he had ever thought of it, it would not have been…

“Don’t worry, Thor. I’ll be careful not to hurt you,” Loki said with a brief smirk. “I know your form cannot take any punishment at all right now.”

Thor wasn’t at first sure what he meant by that, until he felt something slick and warm being smoothed between his legs, Loki’s fingers rubbing gently but insistently until he felt his body relaxing and opening a little. Loki did not delay long, though; a few moments later he had one hand pushing back on Thor’s thigh, keeping him pinned against the back of the seat, while the other guided the thick head of his cock to Thor’s entrance.

Slowly, so slowly, in a single long plunge Loki shifted his weight forward and slid into him, and Thor found himself breathing in rapid gasps, mouth hanging open, hands clutching and scrabbling against Loki’s lithe, strong arms, against his pale chest. So intense it was, so powerful—his body rebelling before he forced himself to calm—that he could not at first identify even whether the feeling was pleasure or pain, and somehow he wondered if it would have been the same had his form not been mortal. Loki wouldn’t have been able to hold him down, certainly.

But Loki’s hands were stroking along his body as he worked himself in deeper, and he made soothing noises that sometimes roughened into groans as he bottomed out and began to move. And it _was_ pleasure Thor felt, an undeniable, trembling warmth that throbbed within him, and Thor was as helpless now against it as he had been unable to escape Loki’s grip before. He knew Loki was just as aware of this, watching him in heated fascination as he fucked him, as if Thor’s every whimper and contortion were a fine wine for him to drink down. Every time Thor bit at his lip, each time Thor’s body bowed and twisted, it was Loki’s mouth that spilled soft moans, and the sounds jolted through Thor’s belly, driving him closer to the edge.

He felt his heart thumping, and his breath caught as Loki bent low over him, his dark hair brushing soft against Thor’s cheek as he moved, and wrapped his arms around him. One hand curled against the back of Thor’s neck; the other wedged under his shoulders so that he was trapped, barely able to do more than squirm—and squirming pressed his straining cock against Loki’s abdomen. Thor could barely breathe from Loki’s possessive hold on him and from the tightness in his chest. He wanted this, wanted to be close to his brother, and that seemed the most natural thing in the world in that moment. No matter what had come between them, he had always loved Loki, and he would give his brother whatever he wanted. He wanted to feel Loki touching him and he wanted to touch, tenderly, reverently, for that is how this should be between them, and he wanted to whisper his love, and he wanted…

Dizzy with desire, Thor tilted his head back, exposing his neck, and Loki took the invitation, sucking and biting again at the sensitive skin.

Loki’s voice was soft and low when he spoke, murmuring just beside Thor’s ear, making him shiver. “See, it’s not so terrible, is it, being beneath me?”

And Thor could have wept for the reminder of why Loki was doing this. That was what burned and ached in his chest and left phantom bruises wherever Loki touched: Loki was doing this to hurt him, to spite him, to shame him. Not out of love at all. When Thor came moments later, spurting across his own belly with a shuddering cry, it was to the sound of Loki’s quiet laughter.

*

When Loki moved away shortly thereafter, Thor had made no motion to get up, instead turning onto his side and half-curling around his knees. He stayed there until, several minutes later, Loki knelt on the floor between him and the fire, lowering himself enough to look into Thor’s eyes as he reached out to sweep sweat-limp hair back from Thor’s forehead.

“Come to bed, brother,” he said, and his voice was all earnest tenderness, and Thor wanted so badly to trust it. “It’s been such a long day. You’re exhausted.”

So he let Loki coax him to his feet and wrap a robe around his shoulders as they made their way to the bed—Loki’s bed, warm and soft and inviting as a memory—and he fell asleep so quickly that he was only dimly aware of Loki’s arms winding around him once more.


	4. Chapter 4

Loki awoke feeling uneasy. He had lain awake half the night, thoughts circling incessantly over the day’s events, and though he wasn’t sure why, his mind kept turning back to the blood spilled that day.

He didn’t care about Helblindi’s death at all, of course. And killing Laufey had made his entire being sing with the sort of mindless joy Loki imagined Thor felt when he smashed some poor bastard’s skull in with Mjolnir. But Odin… his jaw clenched, and he willed himself to instead think of what would be done about Jotunheim. He had said nothing with certainty to the gathering of councilors and warriors hours before, but he knew what had to be done. And with Asgard's wise king of so many long centuries lying on the edge of death from a wound dealt by a Frost Giant… it would not be hard to make it happen—not even for him, though the people of Asgard had never loved him the way they loved Thor.

Thor. Throughout the night, as Loki stared up at the ceiling, Thor had shifted and turned beside him, his repose unsettled. He would murmur unintelligible words and twitch in his sleep, then stretch and turn again. He stilled, with a deep sigh, only when Loki moved to curl around him, wrapping an arm around his front to hold him in place.

Loki wasn’t sure how it was possible, but he could feel the fragile mortality of him even in the warmth of his body. Thor had always run hot, his skin radiating lightning heat. This was softer, sweeter. And it wrung from Loki a feeling of protectiveness for his brother that clashed terribly with the emotions already seething in the pit of his stomach.

What he’d done—that thought, unbearable and irresistible, lingered in his mind even more than the blood on his hands. He’d known what he was going to do before they had even reached his door, and he had no idea how he had managed to keep the tremble of anticipation out of every movement. He’d looked at Thor—the brother Loki had always loved and hated and envied—and knowing how weak he now was had been almost more than Loki could stand. He’d wanted to have Thor under him, wanted to possess him and ruin him. Thor could not resist him. If Loki chose, he could have overpowered him, shoved his face against the wall and taken him then and there, made him weep and tasted the salt of his tears, shattered him and toyed with the pieces. That knowledge made him want Thor more fiercely than he could ever have imagined, and he knew then that he was wholly evil. Evil and wicked and wrong. And that he was going to do it anyway.

But it had been so much more than he could have imagined.

He had fully expected that he could talk Thor into going along with what Loki wanted on the strength of his promise and his ridiculous sense of honor. He had not expected the way Thor had responded—that after he had gotten the fight out of his system, he would give in so easily, opening to Loki’s kiss and clutching at him as if he were drowning. Loki had not expected that. He’d sunk his teeth into the meat of his brother’s shoulder just to hurt him, to hear him whimper and whine, but it hadn’t been enough. A hollow ache had taken root in his chest, and nothing he’d said had soothed it; even when he’d shoved inside and spilled, it had only been eclipsed from within, whited out by pleasure until his breathing calmed again. The look of sad resentment on Thor’s face afterward had helped, sending a swirl of vicious satisfaction through him, but not enough.

He’d gotten what he wanted. He should have been happy. But after enough hours of drifting in and out of his own unsettled slumber with Thor dreaming away beside him, Loki gave up, snarling quietly to himself.

He knew what he had to do to banish that nagging ache permanently, and he may as well begin it without the distraction of Thor.

Thus thinking, he dressed and departed without a backward glance, and quite generously he hoped that Thor’s sleep would prove more restful.

*

The first task was to find a few of the guards who had been present in the aftermath of the Jotun attack upon Odin the day before, and Loki accomplished this easily enough. They obeyed his command when he found them, leading him at a brisk pace through the halls and across a shaded courtyard to a plain wooden door near the entrance to the underground dungeons. Once there, within the chill of the rooms beyond, they did not question his request for a conveyance in which to carry the bodies of the two giants, or for two long, sturdy poles. They nodded, not even daring to look at each other in concern, as he told them what he wished, and they stood aside readily as he took in one last glimpse of the assassins before the deed was done, leaning over the slab on which their bodies had been laid.

He did it not for anything as sentimental as a farewell to the family he had never known, of course. The fact that they were his blood kin made his skin crawl. But he froze the look of their corpses in his memory and he closed the lids over Helblindi’s sticky garnet eyes, shrugging wryly to himself.

“Do it,” he said, and he watched dispassionate as the deed was done.

A short while later, a small smile rested on his lips as he led the group of guards with their grisly cargo across the rainbow bridge.

As they approached, they came before Heimdall, hands on the hilt of his sword, standing before the broad entrance to his observatory. He watched them and did not speak, his expression giving away nothing of his thought, his eyes reflecting the glow of distant nebulae.

Loki tipped his head to him, fully aware of the last time they had spoken and all that Heimdall had surely seen since then; Loki had not hidden all of it, and even without the incriminating parts it was surely bad enough.

“I have a request, gatekeeper, if you can manage it: send these back whence they came.”

“I can,” Heimdall answered, steady and emotionless, and his gaze only barely flickered to the bodies that lay in the cart, mutilated and uncovered.

Loki’s lip twisted then in a smile. “It’s strange that you still distrust me. Yes, I have my own ways of doing things, but the same was always true of Odin, was it not? You know well enough that it was I who brought Thor back among us, and I who interrupted the Jotun attack and killed the would-be assassins. Is that not proof enough of my loyalty?”

Heimdall gave him a slow nod. “And it will be you who returns Asgard to war.”

Loki met his eyes, returning his placid appraisal with equal calm.

“I will send them back to Jotunheim, if that is the king’s order,” Heimdall said after a long silence, sounding suddenly weary.

“It is,” Loki said. “Thank you, Heimdall. Your service is much appreciated, as it has always been.”

And Loki watched as the bodies were sucked into the Bifrost light, to be deposited, blood-stained and mangled as they were, in the ice and snow of Jotunheim.

It would send the Frost Giants into a furor. The loss, in one blow, of king and prince, and no one would care _why_ they had been in Asgard; that would not be seen to matter. It would be enough that they had been murdered and sent back in such dishonored condition. They would muster what little force still remained among their abominable people and prepare to throw themselves at Asgard at the first opportunity.

They would not have long to wait.

And then Loki returned, making the trek back to the palace, on his way passing through the vast square lined with statues of shining golden heroes and perfectly tended greenery, flowers in perpetual bloom. At the end of it, on either side of the massive doors, there stood a pike towering over the yard. On one was the head of Laufey. Helblindi’s skull with its blinded eyes topped the other.

Among the people who passed by at that hour, hands to their open mouths, there were already some who had fought in the last war and recalled the face of the Frost Giants’ king, and this news would be repeated, and soon everyone would know that those who had tried to kill Odin Allfather were not simply a rogue force of a few Jotun malcontents. Everyone would conclude that this was more serious and deserving of a more serious response. Word would spread of the royal Jotun blood dripping down poles in front of Odin’s halls, and it would be taken as a symbol—a harking to the past and a foretelling of the future.

Loki stared up with a grim smile before he went within. Of course it would start a war. That was the point.

*

A few hours later, Thor awakened. He lay with the high morning sun warm on his back and his face buried in the coverlet as the last mist of his dreams dissipated. He lay in his brother’s bed, alone, halfway through the morning.

He knew it had not been a dream. He knew it because he ached where he should not have ached, and because he remembered waking in the middle of the night, in darkness, with Loki’s arms around him and his own back pressed to Loki’s chest. And he also knew just because it simply could not have been a dream. It had happened, and the reality of it hit him again as he woke more fully. He wasn’t sure whether he wanted to pull the blankets up over his head and hide himself there for eternity or bolt out of the bed and pretend it had not happened.

Of course, he could do neither. Whatever it was, he had to face it as bravely as he could. Thor felt himself shivering slightly as he sat up, the blankets falling away.

Thor found his clothes carefully folded and waiting for him on a chair beside the bed—at least Loki had done that for him. Two sets; one pair of his own garments from his chambers, alongside the Midgardian ones he’d worn the day before, giving him the choice of which suited him. That was hardly a decision at all. He slid the tunic over his head and stepped into the dark leggings; he felt out of place enough as it was, and there was at least a little comfort in familiar garb.

There was less comfort in hunger, which came along before he’d finished buckling his belt, and as he’d noticed in his first full day on Midgard it was a more pressing sensation than it had ever been when he had been immortal. He was not ready to face the rest of Asgard yet, though, which meant that he would have to call for food to be brought to him—in his brother’s chambers, where he had quite obviously spent the night.

He frowned. Surely no one else would think deeply on his presence there; he and his brother had many times spent nights in each other’s company. No one would think anything of it. But _he_ knew.

Only the loud rumbling in his belly finally spurred him to grit his teeth and wander out beyond Loki’s door far enough to find a servant, and a few minutes later he sat gratefully at the small table in the corner of Loki’s room, feet folded under his knees, first demolishing a honeyed roll or two and then picking at a cluster of grapes, trying to steady himself.

What he needed to do was… was certainly not to hole up in Loki’s chambers all through the day. He had always been better if he had tasks with which occupy himself. He had always been better at _doing_ , and now more than ever he needed to at least try to keep his mind off of what had happened. (“You have never had difficulty _not thinking_ before,” he could almost hear Loki laugh, to a particularly sharp stab of heartache.)

He had agreed to give Loki his service, to do as his brother bade, even if he did not know exactly what it would mean when he made his promise. But he had agreed, because it was the only way he would have a chance of mending what he’d broken.

So now he would do as he had to do, and that would mean in part learning what he could do with himself, as a mortal in Asgard.

He took a deep breath, eyes closed. He knew his first duty, of course. As soon as he could manage, he ventured out and headed toward where Odin rested in what they all hoped was the deep sleep of recovery, and he pretended that nothing at all was amiss.

*

At some point, Thor knew, surely he would have to look Frigga in the eye again with his brother present. Surely they could not avoid it forever, no matter that he had no idea how he would hide what they had done and conceal what was now between them. Thor knew that he was no good at lying, and for once to have Loki at his side spinning deft deceptions for him would only make it worse. So when he hesitantly pushed open the door to Odin’s chambers, it was with great relief that he found Frigga at the bedside and Loki absent, but also two healers—exactly the sort of stoic, sharp-eyed young women who seemed to gravitate toward the role—moving through arcane actions with silent efficiency and calm.

With strangers present, the lie would come easier. It would seem less odd if he kept mostly quiet.

His mother greeted him with an embrace, her eyes deep with sorrow and weariness, her arms around him warm and gentle. For a little while, they sat together in silence, side by side watching over Odin’s sleep. But in the long stretch of that quiet moment, he began to realize that he too was fixed under her soft scrutiny, in brief sidelong glances.

“Thor, my son… are you well?” Frigga asked, reaching to stroke her hand down his arm in a tentative caress.

He felt himself blanching, his heart thumping; he glanced off into the shadows that edged the room while he groped for an answer that would seem natural, the fingers of one hand twisting unnoted at the edge of his tunic. “It is not my own wellbeing that concerns me right now, Mother,” he said at last, a halting deflection that was true anyway; there were more important things to worry about.

This seemed to satisfy her. “Your father will awaken. You know how strong of will he has always been. If any can survive such an injury, he can.”

She squeezed his hand, and he nodded.

Before them the two healers moved in concert to change the bandage on Odin’s chest, the white cloth stained with blood and yellowish fluid. The ragged wound peeked out beneath, stitched closed now but still a mass of ruin. Thor did not bother to look away. He had seen such injuries all his life, the wounds left by battle.

In his youngest years, before Loki was even big enough to toddle alongside him, he once slipped away from his nurses and into the feasting halls, where warriors just returned from battle drank and sang and told their tales. Somehow he had gone unnoticed as he perched on an empty spot on a bench, his short legs swinging.

“—tall as four Aesir standing upon each others’ shoulders, and with a great axe; its edge caught what dim light there is in the ice lands, and the beast it rode roared like the very ground was being ripped apart. And it gave me this,” the man boomed. He’d lifted a large, ruddy hand from which the last two fingers were missing, the flesh that remained only a twisted pink scar.

Thor had stared in horror, and he must have made some sound, some small whimper, for the next he knew the warrior had turned to him, reached over to tousle his hair.

“Don’t fret, lad,” he said, eyes twinkling. “It was a decent exchange, even if I can’t quite carry around what I took from him. Not with this hand, at least.”

Thor had grown up on such tales. He had grown up knowing anger and defiance and the glory of battle and the greatness of Asgard.

That long-forgotten chill returned as he took in the sight of the wound on his father’s chest. He saw now he had taken the wrong lessons from those old tales.

“His condition is precarious,” one of the healers was saying softly to Frigga, and Thor watched his mother nod, strength in her face and her bear, but fear in her eyes. “He will be attended at all hours until he is more stable.”

“Yes, he will be,” the Queen answered, with a wan smile.

When Thor left some little while later, mouth twitching with grief, he could not forget that feeling.

*

As he departed, closing the door behind himself with troubled care, Frigga chewed her lip and furrowed her brow, feeling that something was wrong. Despite this tragedy, the pall that had been cast over Thor seemed unlike him. He had been strangely quiet, reserved, his thoughts and feelings closed off within himself as never before. He was clearly distressed yet he did not reach out to her as he once might have. And though she understood how much he had been through in the past several days, she could not guess what had caused such a change in the son who had always been so warm, so open. It did not seem to her a good thing.

But she would not grieve yet, and she could not despair. She had to believe that they would all find a way through this.

Earlier that morning Loki had come to see her for just a few moments between other duties, and he _had_ been warm and open with her—unexpectedly so. He had said that Thor had, understandably, been exhausted after the previous day’s events and thus was still sleeping.

“It also meant that we ended our night with much left to discuss,” he added, a little ruefully.

Frigga had found herself nearly smiling. “Well, if you are talking to each other at all, that seems a hopeful sign.”

He embraced her then, and she gazed at him for a moment before giving her blessing to go and take care of the realm.

So she did have hope. But there was so little she could do about any of it that her hope would have to be enough.

*

From the vantage point of a high balcony overlooking the city of Asgard, the dark blue of the seas met the sky in a thin, silvery thread, and the winds tossed and swirled and stung with cold in Thor’s eyes as he stood on the very edge, forearms rested on the smooth surface of the railing. Below, people strolling through the gardens or gathering in an inexplicable cluster at the nearer edge of the courtyard were insect-small, practically insignificant. And the former god of thunder could just make out the slow gathering of deep grey clouds over the distant fields. As he stood there in solitude, they spread to cover the whole sky, blotting out sunlet and stars and the traces of Yggdrasil.

His face was blank, his hair dulled and darkened in the gloom, and his hands clenched and twisted into knuckle-whiteness before him.

That was how he appeared when Sif found him, seeming to have been seeking him for some time by the flash of relief on her face that quickly turned sober.

She came over beside him, leaning likewise against the railing. “How is the Allfather?” she asked.

“There has been little change,” Thor replied, glancing toward her only for a moment, keeping his eyes low. He had always trusted her with his secrets, but now he felt a flood of ice-water in his veins. He knew why she had sought him out. She expected answers from him about what had occurred and what was occurring—what had happened with the Frost Giants, how he fared now that he was home again. But most of all, she would wish to know what had happened between him and Loki. And as much as he wanted to unburden himself, there was so much he could not speak of that he hardly dared speak at all.

She demanded no more from him, only staying beside him, gazing out at the horizon. Yet in the corner of his eye he could see the set of her jaw and remembered uncomfortably all her worries and suspicions the day before. She had believed Loki responsible for what had happened, and Thor knew that in a way she had been right. But if Loki was at fault in part, then Thor would have to take the rest of the blame upon himself: Loki had left the way open, but what incited the Jotnar to their attempt on the Allfather’s life had been Thor’s actions. His belligerence. His stubborn stupidity.

Words slipped out through the tightness in his chest. “Everything I have ever trusted in myself has failed me,” he said, voice low.

Sif’s hand came to rest lightly on top of his and she murmured his name.

His father had stripped his powers from him and cast him down to Midgard so that he would learn humility, so that he would learn that he was neither invincible nor omnipotent. But even that had not forced him to look at the truth of himself. Not as this did.

“It is because of me that my father lies injured,” he continued, guilt battering him like blows he could no longer fight. “Because of Jotunheim.” He had been so certain of himself. He had always trusted in his anger and his strength; neither had proved a worthy guide, and now both were gone. He had always been so sure that his actions were _right_ , that he knew better than everyone; and now, too late, he saw how everything that had gone wrong had happened because of that certainty.

Sif made a sound of argument, but he shook his head, still looking away.

He did not say aloud the next thought that came to him, for he suspected she would have little sympathy: _and it is my fault that Loki hates me._ Because he had taken his brother for granted. Because he had convinced himself that Loki’s love was his due, no matter what he gave in return.

Thor’s fingers clenched tighter on the rail as he avoided the gaze of one of his oldest friends, because he could not bear the thought that she might see some hint of all this in his face. Yet still Sif stayed by him, as if unwilling to leave him on his own. She fidgeted and squared her shoulders beside him as if she were about to speak, but always she bit the words back at the last moment.

And each time she subsided, Thor breathed out imperceptibly in sick relief.

Under the hush of clouds that hung low above them, pressing them under darkness and wrapping them in bitter winds, he at last turned to her.

“I should go; the day wears on,” he said. “But thank you for coming to see me.”

Sif gave him a dubious frown. “Thor…”

“I will be all right, Sif,” he replied, trying to smile.

She pressed her lips together and pulled him into a quick embrace, and he hoped that he was not lying.

*

Tension hung heavy in the air that day over the shining realm with its golden city of gleaming spires. On the streets, people spoke to one another in whispers, looking up at the iron sky and breathing in a scent like damp rust that carried on the breezes. On Tyr’s training fields, men struck at one another in sudden ferocity, ragged clashes of spear on shield rising as the vanquished fell to one knee and the victors stood with heaving shoulders. Ears were cocked, awaiting the sounding horns that would mean the realm was going to war. Above the doors of Odin’s hall, blood-red eyes the crows had not yet ventured to pick stared blindly out across the land.

Within, after bidding Sif goodbye Thor wandered down an empty passageway. Ruddy light flickered from sconces placed every few steps along the way, narrow inset recesses in the walls between them making pockets of shadow.

He should not have been surprised when a figure coalesced out of those shadows and fell into step at his side.

“So tell me. Who was it?”

Thor bowed his head, pale hair swinging forward to veil a guilty look, but he caught the way Loki’s jaw clenched.

“It was only Sif,” he muttered to the air beneath his face.

“Of course.” A tense smile. “And what did she say? Did she come to find out what terrible things I’ve done to you?”

“It was not like that,” Thor protested.

Loki snorted. “No? Then what was it like?”

When Thor shook his head and didn’t answer, he found his wrist suddenly tight in Loki’s grip, Loki’s fingers digging into the bones, forcing him to turn. He gritted his teeth. “She is my friend, Loki! She was your friend as well—as were the others.”

“Were they?” Loki asked, eyebrow lifted in an arch. “I’ve had better friends, in that case.”

“They were,” Thor insisted, but his eyes filled with the sudden confusion of one recognizing a falsehood as it passed his lips. “And she only came to see if I was well. She asked about Father…”

Loki’s hand slackened and slipped away. He shook his head.

“You never noticed, did you? It was enough for you that they loved _you_ and thought you wonderful.”

Thor stopped as if slapped, and he could barely meet Loki’s eyes. “I’m sorry, brother. I’m sorry I never realized,” he said in a low voice.

Loki turned his head to gaze off down the hallway for a moment, considering. Then he nodded.

“Make it up to me,” Loki said then, slyly, reaching out a hand.

At the suggestion, Thor’s eyes went wide and he glanced to either end of the corridor. “Here?” he said.

“Where else?” Loki replied with a grin.

“But… but where?” Thor sputtered. “On the floor?”

Loki laughed. “Perhaps from your knees, if you think that would be more comfortable under the circumstances.”

Thor felt his face going red, but he did not fight against Loki’s hands dragging him toward one of the alcoves or a moment later on his shoulders pressing him inexorably down. Nervously he fumbled at the clasps of Loki’s clothing, glancing up every few moments, aware in every inch of his being of what he was doing and where they were.

There was a sigh from above as he got Loki’s cock drawn out, finding him already thick and hard, and Thor’s heart pounded as Loki’s fingertips grazed his cheek, urging him on.

*

Thor was not skilled at this, but Loki didn’t care: he was clearly trying, mouth hot and wet and clumsy. And, Ymir help them, eager, holding himself upright with hands gripping tight on the few bared inches of Loki’s hips. He licked his way tentatively up and down the sides of Loki’s cock, the vein beneath, and then wrapped his lips around the head and tried to suck, tried to bob his head to take Loki deeper. Yet every few moments he was leaning back on his knees, gulping air and exhaling heat across Loki’s skin—and this made Loki tip his head back to thud against the stone, a rueful smile spreading on his lips.

“You’ll have to do better than that, brother,” Loki said, breathily. “Unless you want us to be here all night.”

Blue eyes glanced up, apologetic and more than a little nervous, and he did try harder. But the extra effort didn’t make much difference. It was a terrible tease, and before Loki could think of stopping himself he had buried his hands in Thor’s hair and dragged him back, forcefully guiding him so that Thor had to struggle to open his throat around Loki’s length.

That was better. He could feel Thor trying to suck, trying to stroke with his tongue, trying to breathe through his nose. Trying to give Loki what he wanted even as fear of discovery hummed through every quiet sound that escaped him, going along with such a ridiculous demand just because Loki had asked it. _That_ was nearly as good as the rest of it, and it was more than enough to make his fingers tighten in silken blond, trembling and bracing his feet against the floor as Thor swallowed obediently around him.

Afterward he waited panting with his back to the wall for Thor to pull himself together and wipe his mouth and clamber to his feet again. Thor’s lips were reddened and his eyelids heavy, and the tense, sharp tangle that had clenched in Loki’s chest that morning loosened a little at the sight. The heaviness of Thor’s lids remained as Loki reached to draw him into a kiss; his pliancy remained as Loki tasted himself in the depths of Thor’s mouth. Thor’s arms wrapped around him and he made a little pleading noise and tilted his hips, hardness pressing urgently against Loki’s pelvis.

Not so selfless after all. “Come on, brother,” Loki said, laughing, moving away abruptly and leading Thor onward. “We will have time for more of that later. For now, we have matters to discuss.”

A little cruelty of this sort was hardly the worst thing Thor would have to endure.

*

As Thor’s poorly concealed anticipation faded, Loki guided their steps toward the royal study and the stack of queries that would be waiting on the desk, all on the same topic.

His lip curled up as he leafed through them, and he glanced slyly over at where Thor stood, awkward and uncomfortable, before he spoke. “It will be your war, in a way,” he said. “Does that please you?”

“What?”

Loki was amazed to hear honest surprise and confusion in his voice. He raised an eyebrow. “Hm?”

“You said we might not…” Thor stuttered out.

Loki shrugged. “You must know there will be war over what has happened, brother. The Allfather has been attacked. The people will not stand for this; they are maddened as they have never been in all our lives, and they demand vengeance,” Loki said. “Don’t tell me you expected anything else.”

“But we can still avoid it, can’t we?” Thor said, his look of confusion shifting to hope. “It need not come to that. Nothing has yet been done which cannot be undone.”

Loki could not help but stare at him— _you, brother, who I have seen step laughing over fallen enemies while wiping their blood from your face? You ask_ not _to go to war?_ But all he said was, “Why should we avoid it?”

Thor paced a few steps back and forth across Loki’s floor, seeming to struggle to find his voice and eventually shaking his head, unable to explain. “Delay a while, at least,” he said. “Please. Find reason to delay. If Father…” here he swallowed and glanced at the ground, “if Father doesn’t waken soon, you can do whatever you deem right. But for now, delay.”

“Why do you not wish us to go to war with Jotunheim?” Loki ground out, eyes narrowed. “Do you simply hesitate because _you_ would not be able to fight in it, at least not until Odin awakens and restores you? Or do you scruple from it because now it is _me_ suggesting the idea?” At this last, Loki nearly laughed, a single huff of dark humor.

Thor looked stricken. “No… brother… listen to me. It’s not that at all,” he pleaded. “How many would die if we were to go to war? How many would suffer? How much blood would be shed before it ended?”

“So it is cowardice? The mighty Thor, gone soft, turned battle-shy? No one would believe that. Not of you. So why?”

Thor’s clenched fists rose suddenly at his sides as he cried out, “It would be my fault!”

Loki stared at him, taking in the rise and fall of his chest and the helpless way his brows drew together. There was no anger in Thor’s eyes, just dread. At the realization, Loki frowned, mouth turning down as if at something wholly bitter. There _had_ to be a war. Everything depended on it—until the Jotun race that had spawned him had been obliterated, Loki could not be truly satisfied. The ache would not heal.

“Very well, Thor,” said a voice, and it took Loki a moment to realize it was his.

As the expression of almost pathetic relief washed over Thor’s face, he knew he could not take it back.

“If it weren’t for my intervention, you would be king now; our roles would be reversed,” he added, trying to force some levity into his words. “So I suppose it is only fair that your will be what guides us. We will see where it leads. We will delay, though we may not be able to delay too long.”

Even more distressing was Thor’s grateful look.

He had no idea what he’d just gotten Loki to agree to, and he was so pleased; he only cared that Loki had not just made him responsible for a war.

“Thank you, brother,” Thor said, eyes damp though he tried to hide it, and he drifted nearer and hesitantly kissed him, hands to Loki’s shoulders.

Loki allowed it, but his mind wandered. There would be costs, perhaps disastrous ones—just that morning he had stirred up public sentiment toward a war, and now he would have to restrain it or be trampled.

And thus it was that before the day had ended, Loki stood and spoke to the king’s councilors, and word was spread that while war might come, Asgard would not leap into it in haste; instead they would use this lull to prepare, to gather their forces and fortify their guard. And each voice that passed the word to a new ear resonated with dissatisfaction and uneasy perplexity. War was inevitable, and yet the dark son, the strange and weaker son who sat on Odin’s throne, schemed and waited and did not see that force must be met with force.

*

Loki himself again barely rested that night, once again keeping Thor close by him and watching as he slept, the hollowness in his chest burning, and he could not keep himself from envisioning the look of grateful relief that had been smeared across Thor’s face when Loki acquiesced to the delay. He couldn’t keep himself from seeing it in his mind’s eye, and he could not stand it. It grated against his nerves.

Loki had won. He had control over Thor, the long-envied brother weakened, defeated, debased. And yet, in a way, not much had changed. Loki had forced Thor into his bed, toppled him in the most visceral, tangible sense, but it had not shattered him as Loki expected. Thor still looked at him as the beloved brother he had always trusted in. And now, simply by looking pitiful, Thor had gotten him to upset his plans. Thor had _expected_ him to give in, to indulge him in what he wanted. And Loki had done it. He hadn’t been able to resist, by force of habit after so long spent craving Thor’s approval.

Damn him, Loki thought. It was a weakness that Loki did not intend to fall victim to again.

He had to wipe away the memory of that look; the need to do so burned in him until he had no choice but to waken Thor, wrenching him up from sleep by his nightshirt before Thor’s eyes even fully fluttered open in the dark of the room, dragging Thor up flush against himself and twisting his fingers tightly in the cloth at Thor’s neck.

“You infuriate me,” he said, bristling even more at the sleepy, surprised sound that escaped Thor’s mouth. “And you are far too comfortable in our arrangement.”

Thor’s hands came up toward where Loki gripped him but he did not even try to pry away the now so much stronger fingers.

“Loki?” he said in a scratchy voice, groping through the dissipating fog of dreams. “What…? I don’t…”

“This is not meant to be comfortable for you,” Loki heard himself hiss. “This is meant as retribution. It’s meant to _hurt you_.” And Thor had just _taken_ it; the knowledge made Loki want to push harder, beyond reason, to find out just what it would take to make Thor finally break.

Thor’s mouth fell open and a look of hurt confusion crept across his face like a blush. “What should I do, Loki? What must I do to earn your forgiveness?”

Loki snarled and shoved himself backward, putting distance between them. “When did I ever say I intended to forgive you? Perhaps I simply enjoy tormenting you and making you lower yourself for my gratification. Perhaps this is exactly all that I want. Perhaps I love to see you suffer more than I ever loved you in yourself.”

“You don’t mean that, brother…”

“Don’t I?” Loki hissed. “What makes you so certain?”

Thor struggled for an answer, but there was none to give.

He was still gaping, the look of crushing dismay stealing across him like a sluggish shadow, when Loki got to his feet. As Loki hastily threw on a robe, shooting vicious glances his way, Thor sank down lower, curled under the furs on the bed, and shut his eyes tightly. He did not bother to even raise his head as the door opened and shut again in Loki’s wake.

*

Once outside, Loki slumped against the wall and tried to take his mind off the stinging pain in his chest. Curiously, he lifted his hand in front of his eyes and was surprised to find that he did not look like a monster.

Thor would find out soon enough, if this had not driven the lesson home at last.


	5. Chapter 5

When Thor woke the next day, it was to Loki’s voice, sounding unbelievably cheerful.

“Awaken, dear brother! The day is wasting away without you,” Loki teased, tugging the furs away, and it reminded Thor for a terrible, wrenching moment of a time years ago when they had woken each other like that each morn, whoever got up first winning the privilege of subjecting the other to a variety of brotherly torments. The memory shoved him to the surface, tore him out of some dull dream, and made his eyes open to the sight of Loki standing over him, watching him intently.

“Brother,” Thor said, a bare sigh.

“Your resemblance to a slug is impressive, but it is past time to open your eyes,” Loki answered with a chuckle, nudging him again. “We both have things to do.”

Thor had fallen asleep wishing (without great success) to convince himself that Loki hadn’t truly meant what he’d said. Yet now he found that somehow he had been expecting that Loki’s words the night before would mean torture would follow—something violent and physical and brutal, something to mar and bruise and cut. Instead Loki leaned over him, mussing his hair with a casual hand and crowding him back into his pillow with a smile that gave away nothing, and when at last Thor shoved himself up on his elbows and sat up, Loki informed him that, as he had other business to attend to, Thor should go to keep their mother company a while, and that afterward Loki would come to find him and they would together go about kingly duties.

And Thor obeyed, yet at least half the day he spent hoping that Loki’s casual manner, as if nothing had happened, meant things were not so bad. The rest was spent fearing some sudden trick, some display of the anger his brother had hidden away so completely for years. His fingers clenched reflexively for protection but no hammer answered his call. His breath sped even under the unknowing eyes of all the courtiers whenever Loki turned to him for some small confirmation or approval. By the time they dined together, his nerves were too frayed to eat much, though he was viciously hungry.

And then, looking him in the eye with utter calm, Loki began to muse about a few of the nobles they had been dealing with an hour before—most of whom they had been at least glancingly familiar with since childhood, both their peers and their elders.

“He always used to come up with such nasty rumors about you even as he feigned friendship,” Loki said of one.

“Like what?” Thor asked before he could think to silence himself.

Loki shrugged. “One I recall was when you were sixteen, he told everyone that you did not yet know where children came from.” A flicker of humor, quickly hidden.

Thor’s brows drew together and with difficulty he swallowed the small bite of bread and cheese he had forced upon himself.

“Oh, I did stop him,” Loki added, leaning back and inspecting his fingernails, casual as could be. “As soon as I found out, in fact, although the rumor had already spread. There were others, though. You were always too _trusting_ , Thor. And you always found it so easy to believe that everyone was as pleased with your accomplishments as you were yourself.”

Loki went on, telling him many such things: as he nibbled at his own meal and licked delicately at his lips, he told Thor who among their acquaintances secretly despised and ridiculed Thor and who dismissed him as a spoiled child prone to tantrums. Loki gave him apologetic little smiles as he mentioned how, long ago, some had even attempted to get into Sif’s sweet little mannish trousers simply because it was assumed that the two friends would one day plight their troth and they wished to be able to laugh behind his back later.

“I’m sorry, brother. I thought certainly you must already know at least some of it…” Loki murmured, sympathetic, when Thor at last pressed his hands to his face.

Some of those Loki had named were people Thor had considered friends—had trusted, confided in. And the details rung true, calling up memories of odd little glances he’d thought nothing of at the time. “Tell me it’s not so,” he said without moving, and Loki did not reply, confirming with his silence Thor’s fears.

Of course Thor hadn’t known. If he had known, he would have… would have what? He could not have torn through the high court of Asgard with Mjolnir in his hand; it would not stop a single word, would only inspire more derision. He could not have smashed through his detractors here, and now of course he could do even less. Now he could do _nothing_. Had he learned of this years ago, he knew he would at least have snarled at them and made open enemies of them, and been miserable until he got over the feeling of betrayal. Instead, just this afternoon, in complete and blissful ignorance he had smiled and greeted those others who nodded back so pleasantly and probably celebrated his downfall.

The knowledge hurt. It made him feel ill, and he turned his gaze to his brother, who went on, unconcerned.

“It’s really only a few, though. I’m not sure how you ever expected different; not _everyone_ in Asgard can love you. At least you have never wanted for praise and adoration from most of the realm.”

When Loki met his eyes, though, he saw the resentment waiting there. “You mean to say at least I am not you?” he asked, hollowly.

In reply, Loki seemed unable to restrain a quick laugh and a sweet smile. “Thor, if you were me you’d have crumbled ages ago.”

And Thor knew he was probably right. Even learning of these harmless little secrets now made him doubt everything—his perceptions, his judgments, his place. And it only grew worse as Loki caught up one of his hands, squeezed it, and, with his expression shifting between solicitousness and amusement, told him yet more of how his arrogance had earned him derision, and how Loki had so loyally stood in his shadow. How he had always been so confident of the high regard others held him in, and how often he had been wrong. Loki reminded him of every stupidity he had committed over the years and every rash, foolish act that had come out badly, until his ears burned with shame at the memories and more so at the cold scorn in Loki’s voice. Loki lashed him with his words, splayed him open and left him bare, left Thor feeling humbled as he had not even when he watched his father’s anger turn to disappointment just before he cast him out.

*

“I have been thinking, Thor, of what I agreed to at your request yesterday,” Loki said a little while later, as Thor still reeled, feeling scoured and small. “I still believe it is a mistake not to fight them. The people want it, and I want it, and I cannot believe you’re the one to say nay. So let us make a challenge of it: I will try to convince you, and if I do, then we will go to war with Jotunheim as I choose. If I fail… then Asgard remains at peace.”

Thor stared through his fingers at his brother and heaved a shaky sigh. He could barely think, and he barely remembered in that moment why he had felt so strongly about it. And he knew how persuasive Loki could be. But it didn’t seem to matter; he would have to say yes, because what excuse, what possible reason could there be to say no?

Weakly, he nodded.

“Good,” said Loki, turning a bright smile on him. “Now I have another task for you, since I have gotten little use out of your service thus far: attend me, brother.” At this, he lifted a boar-bristle hairbrush, its handle a smooth, shining black, from his table and extended it toward him.

With a numbness fogging his head and his limbs, Thor got to his feet and took it, went to stand behind the straight-backed chair in which Loki sat with his long legs folded under himself. Under his fingers, Loki’s hair was soft, its usually smoothed waves fallen into loose disarray, and the brush slid through easily. There was something calming about it—Loki did not say anything, and Thor combed through the few tangles with careful fingers, and he rubbed light circles at Loki’s temples until he heard his brother sigh.

Thor suddenly knew how it felt to desire approval and be doubtful of receiving it, and he felt suddenly grateful that Loki allowed him to do this, to try to please him even if he could not make up for so many years of heedlessness. And the feeling was warm in his chest and compelled him to bend, sweeping Loki’s hair to one side to kiss the edge of his neck.

When Loki tilted his head back, eyes closed, Thor took it as an invitation; he kissed him where he stood for a moment, a tentative, lingering press of lips. Only when Loki’s mouth opened, tongue snaking out and sliding against his, did he deepen the kiss, and more when Loki’s hand came up to curl around the back of his neck with such tenderness that it made him ache for more.

It was different now. The first time, he had been caught in a welter of emotion and sensation. Weak, mortal, painfully aware of Loki’s poisonous intentions—he had been overwhelmed. He had tried to cling to the knowledge that such relations between brothers were wrong, but even that had been swept away in the storm. The second time, furtively giving Loki pleasure in the hallway alcove, it had all happened too quickly; his own inexperience and guilty shame and the danger of discovery making him falter and the demanding pressure of Loki’s hands driving him on, and he had not had time to think of what he felt.

Now he set the brush aside and came around to Loki’s side to continue the kiss. It would do no good to offer up clumsy apologies. He did not have the words to soothe his brother’s anger and convince Loki to love him again. As they kissed he moved to straddle Loki’s legs and put his hands to Loki’s shoulders, kneading at the tense muscles. Loki let him, relaxing under his touch, a purr of contentment in his throat, a few soft words of praise murmured against Thor’s cheek.  
  
“We were meant to be like this, brother,” Loki said to him, soft and sure. “You were meant to be mine.”  
  
It cut through the lost and hollow feeling that had been left by their conversation. And by the time Loki began to move against him in sinuous motions, his hands clutching at Thor’s waist, Thor could not even pretend to be unwilling.

*

It became a routine. Loki generally woke first, leaving Thor asleep in his bed as he went about his own secretive business. In the next part of the day, when he made Thor accompany him, he could not help but watch as Thor drew back from everyone, suddenly wary and suddenly aware, his confidence shattered and a brittle terror shimmering behind the blue of his eyes, as if he now doubted everything, from the most casual greeting to the solidity of the ground beneath his feet. Watching Thor try to conceal his discomfort and get through each moment was fascinating enough that Loki often found that he had lost the thread of the discussion and had to recover it through hasty and awkward maneuvering.

He was disappointed, but not surprised, when after a week or two Thor seemed no longer able to force himself to suffer through those meetings and began to make excuses (illness, weariness, even a sudden interest in a particular book), practically begging to be allowed to stay behind. A few times more he made Thor accompany him, glee thrilling through him at the way Thor seemed to shrink, never quite meeting anyone’s eyes, an occasional tremble running through him that seemed just as much a mark of suppressed, directionless anger as of fear. But when he found Thor one evening curled around his knees, eyes red-rimmed and brimming, he had stroked a hand down his back and petted his golden hair and told him he wouldn’t have to do it anymore, and Thor had clung to him and sobbed and nuzzled into his shoulder, seeking physical comfort. And, as always happened when he took pity on his fool of a brother, in a matter of hours it soured in him and stirred up deep reserves of cruelty that he took pleasure in loosing upon Thor in creative ways.

He didn’t know why he took pity on him so often, or why Thor seemed unable to turn against his tormentor.  
*

Thor still came to keep Frigga company in her vigil at Odin’s bedside every day, and as he sat in silence, staring unseeing at his father’s face, Frigga took the opportunity to study him discreetly.

He was changed like this, the loss of his immortality immediately apparent to her eyes, but that was only part of what she saw. She knew this was so because as the days passed, it had been getting worse.

“Are you feeling well, my son?” she asked softly when at last he sighed and turned his gaze from the slowly healing form enrobed in golden light. She asked this question of him most days. But while at first he had tried to reassure her, offering one of his brave smiles, now he only dropped his eyes and nodded.

It wasn’t very convincing. Frigga pursed her lips.

“I’ve heard from Fulla that you’ve withdrawn from the afternoon councils. She also says you hardly leave the palace anymore.”

That did get a reaction, but only of him looking up at her, blinking as if he’d had no idea the realm’s queen would ask her handmaids to keep an eye on things for her. “It means nothing,” he said at last.

“No? It seems to me it must have _some_ meaning.”

Thor sighed, shoulders sinking. “It is hard. Being home, like this.”

Frigga moved to sit nearer to him then and though he still had trouble meeting her eyes, he let her stroke his hair back and cup his cheek in a tender hand. For Thor to admit such difficulty meant it was bad indeed—he had his own uncertain state to contend with, along with the shadow of grief and worry cast across all their lives by Odin’s grievous wounds. And he was unwilling to share these with her, perhaps afraid of adding to her burdens with his own.

Frigga herself had been tempted many times to consult her loom for reassurance that her husband _would_ wake and be well again eventually, but each time she had hesitated. Doing so would be to admit her doubt, and that felt too much like giving in to it. She had gone on trying to face this as if it were any other sleep when it was anything but.

“I know it must be,” she said, tucking a lock of blond back behind his ear. “But I also know how strong you are, in a way that has nothing to do with what was taken from you, and I know you can do this.”

For the first time, he gave her a grateful look and a hint of a smile. But it didn’t last. The room was hushed, terribly so, with golden light that somehow brought no cheer, lighting half their faces and casting dark shadows. And only two figures sitting there together.

She knew well the burdens and responsibilities that had fallen to Loki, with Odin wounded and she at her vigil and Thor made mortal, but she had seen her younger son for only a few minutes each of the last several days, and that added to her worries. At their last conversation of any length—on that terrible day—he had been so obviously distraught. Though he had promised to try to mend things with Thor, she knew these times would be hard on him as well. They needed one another now, she and her sons, to strengthen and support each other.

“And Loki?” she asked.

There was a flicker of something unreadable on Thor’s face, and then he gave her a questioning look, waiting for her to go on.

She tried to smile, with a warm little nudge of her shoulder against his. “Are you and your brother getting along?” It was a question she’d spoken countless times when they were young; so often they would come to her for mediation when they’d fought, and all it would take was a few motherly words to bring them together once more. It was comforting to call to mind those simpler times.

Thor nodded but glanced away—and oddly, for an instant, she almost thought she saw him blushing just a little.

*

“Your stubbornness is not one of your most endearing qualities, brother,” Loki had said as they talked the night before, frowning darkly, hands toying idly with a smooth grey stone that had been perched on a stack of papers on his desk.

He had at least waited until after they had finished the evening meal to start up the argument again—each night they ate together and talked, and Thor knew that even when their discussion was normal enough, speaking of unimportant and ordinary matters, bringing on pangs of nostalgia that made him wretched, eventually it would come back to this.

Each night Loki again tried to convince him that they should go to war with Jotunheim. He made appeals to glory and to old tales and to their father’s deeds. He mused on the inevitability of it and how much worse it would be for the delay. He found more and more justifications to batter against Thor’s conscience, recalling Thor’s own past words and actions—and _that_ reminder simply made things worse.

Each time Thor refused, he did so in a quieter voice, head rested on his hands. He couldn’t say yes to what Loki proposed. He _couldn’t_. One of these times, he knew he would.

Two nights before, Loki had been sprawled out on the long seat before the fire, casually, one hand in his hair. “Midgard won’t fare well against them,” he said. “They didn’t the first time, and I doubt much has changed.”

Thor had stared at him. “Midgard? What do you mean?”

“You can’t believe the Frost Giants will only threaten _this_ realm, do you? And if the giants come there, no matter how pleasant you find the mortals, they will be destroyed. They will die, but we can save them now, if you just… give in. Let me have my war.”

“I cannot,” Thor said, swallowing hard at the images Loki’s words had conjured and the twinge of worry they called to his mind. “If the Jotnar attack Midgard, then… then of course we will go to defend them.”

“Thor, you know their nature as well as I,” Loki said, rolling to look at him direct. “They _will_ do so. So how could it be wrong for us to simply take it as done and preempt the damage they would do as soon as the opportunity arose?”

“No,” Thor insisted, feeling the start of a tense pain behind his eyes and clinging to what had seemed so sure a few moments earlier. “We don’t know that. And we cannot use the possibility as a reason to attack an innocent realm first!”

“Innocent?” Loki laughed. “Do you not remember what they did to Father?”

This was a low blow. Thor had to turn away for a moment, put his fingers to his temples. “Of course I do. But I don’t believe Father would want us to do this. He… he banished me so that I would learn that. How can I give you what you ask, when I have seen how wrong I was? I was wrong about so many things.” And he did not want this on his head, but saying so only ever made Loki sneer at him with contempt.

Loki narrowed his eyes at Thor’s refusal but then merely took a breath and shrugged, as if he was sure he could wear Thor down eventually.

The next night, Loki offered up a wholly different sort of argument.

“I don’t doubt you are unaware of this, but there is an impatience growing among the people,” Loki told him. “As I’ve said from the start, they want vengeance, and it is getting worse as time goes on. I’ve tried to turn them aside, but it has merely meant that I am in the way of all that anger. If you could stand to attend the councils, I would urge you to do so, just to see the hostility that has come even there. For your sake I’ve tried, brother, but I’m not sure how much more I can delay.”

Thor blinked. He had thought that their arguments were mere caprice—that it was just a game that Loki wished to win. But this time, Loki had said it almost with resignation, speaking over his shoulder as he settled down to the paperwork that awaited him on his desk. It was not the usual form of the argument, and it took Thor by surprise.

He shuffled uneasily in his seat by the hearth as he sought a way to answer. “If it is so bad, then… why do you not…”

“Are you agreeing?” Loki asked, cutting him off with a sharp glare.

Shadows yawned between them, and Thor gnawed at his lip before he spoke. “You are king now, brother, and I am not. You can do what you wish regardless of what I say.”

“But it was you who made the decision, as my advisor and as my dear brother whose opinions I put great stock in, and I gave you my word I would follow it. Do you mean to release me from my promise?”

Thor shook his head, startled.

“Or do you think I’m such a villain that I wouldn’t care that I had broken my word?” Loki’s voice had grown tense and his eyes had gone cold. “This was your choice. _You_ demanded this—you nearly begged me. You cannot have it both ways, brother. So until you change your mind, whatever comes shall be your fault. That is simply a natural consequence of the bargain.”

Loki had turned his back on him then, busying himself with such definiteness that there was nothing Thor could possibly say. Much later, Loki finished his work and stood, stretching, and only then did he turn his attention back to Thor, beckoning him close and leading him toward the bed they shared.

“You are horribly cruel in your thoughtlessness, brother. You always have been,” Loki said, tugging at Thor’s hands until he’d wrapped his arms around him, fixing him with a strange little smile. “But I can be worse.”

Some nights Loki coaxed him into his bed with the promise of something that resembled tenderness, lulled him with lies that he wished to believe. But this was not one of those. Loki made him submit and made him feel it. He could feel how Loki reveled in the ability to control and restrain him, manipulating his body, pushing him around like a doll, yet he felt also what great pains Loki took not to hurt him—it would be so easy for him to bruise and break this mortal form.

Loki delighted in making him squirm as he arranged their bodies to fit together. He pulled Thor up with a nudge, maneuvered him onto his hands and knees, and once there used his palms to spread Thor’s nether cheeks, baring him in a way that made Thor’s face flush with embarrassment, before slipping slicked fingers inside. And through it all Loki whispered vicious words across Thor’s skin at the same time as he marked him with kisses. Loki cursed him, told him how witless he was, how selfish, how he should not be permitted to rule even himself.

“I know,” Thor answered, words practically choked in his throat as the fingers inside him twisted and moved, sending hot jolts of pleasure through him that nearly matched the burn of shame, the feelings combining in a guilty thrill. “I am just as unworthy as you say.”

Loki made a noise of approval at that and bent to kiss tenderly at Thor’s spine. And when Loki took him like that, on their knees, the hush of warm breath whispering insults into his ear, Thor welcomed it. He wanted Loki to use him in any lowly fashion, if only for a chance to prove his contrition. And the way he _wanted_ made the feeling of disgrace build until he almost couldn’t stand it.

He felt nearly ready to grovel by the time Loki’s hand wrapped tight around his straining cock, stroking and pulling in time with his thrusts.

“Loki,” Thor pleaded.

“Shameless,” Loki chided, and all Thor could do was moan helplessly, caught between the hand that gripped him and the cock in his ass and the warm tickle of Loki’s lips against his shoulderblade.

The humiliation burned so hot that he had to shut his eyes when he came shuddering in Loki’s grasp, hearing the rushing of his heartbeat in his ears and feeling Loki’s lips against his skin, and that knife-edge smile.

*

He looked up blinking and startled when his mother spoke his name for the second time as they sat together at Odin’s bedside.

“I’m sorry,” he said, frowning and trying to rid himself of the clinging, sticky memory, wanting to duck his head and avoid his mother’s gaze forever. “My mind was wandering.”

She placed her hand atop his and patted it. “I was saying that I did not agree with your father’s actions, when he cast you out. I know he had his reasons, but it did not seem right to me then, and I do not believe it _was_ right, whatever he thought you would learn from it,” Frigga said, her expression pensive.

She did not say, though, whether she believed Odin would choose to undo the punishment when he woke, and Thor didn’t dare to ask. It seemed wrong even to hope it, yet the alternative was unthinkable. He did not answer but for a quiet nod, his eyes kept on the floor so as not to meet hers.

Whatever Odin thought he would learn.

A few nights before, during one of those arguments that Loki insisted upon having, Thor had gotten angry.

“Yes, I _know_ that once I would not have cared how many of them I killed! But I was wrong then, and I have changed now. I have learned from my mistakes, and I will not make the same ones again,” he had snapped.

“Learned? When did that happen?” Loki had asked, head tilted in mock perplexity.

Thor had started to answer, but his anger and his certainty faltered as he tried to think of what words he could use to explain his change of heart and how swiftly it had happened. A heavy chill ran in his veins. Not long ago, he had been ready to go to Odin and declare that he had learned humility, and he had not even noted the irony in the pride he had felt over it. So what did he truly think he’d learned by finding himself unable to lift Mjolnir? By spending a few days as an equal to mortals? He had so easily offered his life up when the opportunity came, and he had felt pleased with himself for that as well… but what did that prove? He had risked his life in battle many a time. And he had not truly believed, in his heart, that Loki would do him any real harm. It had been no great trial.

What did he think he’d learned? Nothing that would have lasted. If it had ended there, those lessons could have been forgotten or dismissed when he returned to familiar terrain, when he found himself a god again. They would have faded away like mists and old memories, and he would have been just the same as he had always been. Or worse, deceived into believing that he _had_ become better and that the work was done.

But the things he had discovered since then cut him too deeply to be such vain fancies.

When he lifted his head again and saw his mother still watching him with concern, he tried to feign a smile. And he hated it—he hated feigning wellbeing even as much as he was able under the circumstances. On those mornings, the dishonesty of it strained him, and more and more often he felt unable to put forth the effort of deceiving one who knew him so well.

“I am not well, in truth. I think I should rest for the day,” he told her then before he could think better of it, adding that she should not worry if he did not come the next morning either.

He wondered to himself how long he could remain absent before she would break her vigil to seek him out, hoping it would be long and at the same time scolding himself for the thought.

Frigga only nodded her assent, reaching to stroke the hair back from his forehead and leaning up to press a motherly kiss to his brow, and he felt even worse for the open lie.

*

Later Thor lay on the bed in Loki’s chambers, head rested on his forearm, eyes half-closed. Loki was gone, as he was quite mysteriously each morning. His chambers seemed dimmer than the rest of Asgard—and in the shadows on the edges of the room, bundled into baskets and basins and crammed onto bookshelves were bits and pieces of magic, scraps of paper and baubles of silver and rune-scrawls and dried crumbled leaves. The detritus of a life spent in the shadows, a side to his brother that he had never paid attention to. And now he peered at it all with timid curiosity and wondered what else he did not know of Loki. It felt appropriate that the place was in near-darkness, just the ruddy circle of firelight surrounded by shadows, and the dimness was comfortable to him now in a way the brighter halls outside were not any longer.

The only obligation he had not yet dispensed with was the ritual of dining with his brother at the end of the day, and only a few times had Loki dragged him out to the feasting hall rather than having food brought to them. Either way, it meant he had the entirety of the day to spend alone.

Hiding.

That was what he was doing, even if he had not named it so aloud. He, Thor, who had faced down fearsome foes on realms far and strange, whose name was once invoked by Midgardians in need of courage and strength... but he was not that person anymore, was he?

He was hiding from a life that was not truly his any longer, a life he no longer believed in, and he lay there alone, feeling absent within himself; absent and empty and small.

He closed his eyes fully and floated in the darkness that had enveloped him and waited for Loki to return.


	6. Chapter 6

When tales were told long after of that time—the brief and troubled reign of Loki Odinson—they told of grim days filled with anxious waiting and cold winds and dark speculation. They spoke of how the pent-up will to battle, so stirred by the sight of Jotun heads before the palace gates, so stifled by Loki’s delaying word, fermented in every vein, turning to idle frustration and ready complaint. And how within Odin’s hall there sped worse tidings. Thor, so long the golden son, had gone silent and sullen at his brother’s side, appearing less and less frequently as the days passed until eventually he did not leave the king’s chambers. Rumors flew: the prince, now weakened at his injured father’s decree, had taken ill with some mysterious mortal ailment. He was still seen now and then by the serving girls who brought his meals, and they said he appeared weary, with dark circles beneath his eyes as if he hadn’t slept, his skin fever-sallow, his voice a husky whisper when he thanked them. His hair, though brushed and clean, seemed dull; he wore no princely clothes, as if he cared nothing for how he appeared. And he avoided any other eyes, keeping to himself with a hesitancy that no one would have believed of the bold thunder god he had been.

And King Loki… there was another matter for hushed speculation. Word passed amongst the courtiers and petitioners of shifts of mood and moments of distraction, of the sharp responses when he came back to himself, of the hissed and dismissive orders that had replaced his once-congenial manner. Those who dared speculated that it was due to the Jotun problem, or perhaps the clear dissatisfaction of the people pushing him toward a war he couldn’t stomach. Or perhaps it was due to his brother’s ailment.

The most prurient whispers noted that the one on the throne had sorcery enough to _cause_ such illness. There were spells to drain men of their will and vigor, and if anyone knew them…

Hardly anyone believed that, though.

But whatever one believed, the brief moment of faith in the younger son had faded clean away like morning mist in winter, as quick and as cold.

*

For weeks, every few days, a group of four individuals met each evening, not far from Odin’s hall, at a small, out-of-the-way tavern hidden down a narrow lane and wedged between a baker’s shop and a greengrocer’s.

The first night, Sif had delivered the news that she had gotten absolutely no answers out of Thor, and the rate of solid information had only gotten poorer since then; none of them, taking turns at waiting in likely places for Thor to wander by, had actually had a chance to speak with him at any length. And wheedling gossip out of the palace staff had proved an abject failure (as they all should have known it would be. Those who knew anything were as yet disinclined to speak in too much detail—although Volstagg had been correct in his assurance that the kitchen ladies would be willing to talk to him, and from them the four had learned that whatever had happened to Thor, the affect on his appetite had been dramatic indeed. Though he was mortal now, so it was hard to be sure what that meant.)

After the first week, they had determined this much: Thor seemed to spend the mornings at Odin’s bedside with Frigga, and sometimes Loki would join them for a short while, and when he left, Thor would accompany him. From there, their days seemed wholly occupied with official business of various kinds, and when night fell they would invariably retire together. Everything else was hidden behind closed doors, which struck the four as both frustrating and intensely worrying.

Then, at half a month after they went to bring Thor back from Midgard, Fandral returned (after a day that was otherwise nearly entirely wasted attempting light flirtations with Frigga’s handmaidens) with the news that he had spoken to Thor, if only briefly, catching him on his way back from a visit to Odin’s chambers.

“I don’t know what to make of it, exactly, the look he gave me when I first came across him, except that I have never seen him to look so... well, the closest I have seen was when he was but a lad and had gotten himself into a mess and had yet to confess it. A guilty look, I suppose. There is definitely something troubling going on there.” Fandral met all his companions’ eyes before dipping his nose into the mug of heady ale he’d been brought by the buxom serving girl (and, quite tellingly, he was distressed enough that he hadn’t even winked at her). He needed it sorely; he took a long draught before continuing. “What makes me fear for him most is that he hardly even seemed to want to greet me.”

“So what exactly did he say?” asked Sif, leaning over the table.

“Not much, sadly enough. I told him we had all been missing seeing him, and he merely apologized and said duty has kept him too busy to spend much time elsewhere. I suggested, then, that everyone ought to be able to take an evening off, and he shook his head and gave me a look that I would almost call _haunted_. And I would have asked him what it was about when he suddenly made to excuse himself and bade me goodbye. It was _most_ peculiar. He didn’t seem like himself at all. He didn’t smile once.”

“Well, under the circumstances…” Volstagg began, trailing off with a vague wave of his hand.

“But how do we know what the circumstances are? All we know is that he won’t talk to us,” Fandral said in consternation.

“That is _not_ all we know,” Sif put in, nostrils flaring, giving the table a particularly vicious stab with the butter knife in her hands. None of them had voiced their views on what Thor told them he’d promised Loki, but their shared look said all. (Of course Loki was their friend, they would have insisted had anyone raised a perplexed eyebrow, but that made them neither stupid nor blind. Loki was also a snake, devious and venomous and sly. This was a good quality when he was your ally. Not so much when he was turned against your side.)

Then when the whole month had passed, Hogun told, in unadorned words, of a day spent practically motionless in a good vantage spot, waiting to see if Thor left Loki’s chambers at all. He hadn’t.

“I think, my friends, it’s gone beyond time for us to take action,” Volstagg said after a few moments, leaning back and resting folded hands on his rounded belly. “Thor needs our help, though it seems he can’t ask for it, or won’t, or… doesn’t know he ought to. And we all know this: while Loki is king, we can do nothing.”

The insinuation spread from one to the other. It caused Fandral to look away, becoming suddenly interested in the head of foam on his flagon. It narrowed Sif’s eyes over the knife she perpetually toyed with, pressing its edge into the wood. From Hogun it produced a nod above interwoven fingers.

“I will go with you,” Hogun volunteered, keeping his voice pitched low enough that it could not be heard beyond their huddle over the clatter of the room.

Volstagg grinned at him. “It’s settled, then, and Sif and Fandral can remain here to busy themselves with daring deeds of eavesdropping and skullduggery. We ourselves are best suited to more active endeavors.”

The two mentioned rolled their eyes and shrugged their shoulders.

It was like this: With Odin lying wounded and unconscious, with Frigga at his side and likely hearing little of Loki’s kingship not from the mouth of the man himself, with Thor made mortal and anyway unwilling to speak out against his brother, there was only one authority to whom they could take their appeal: the Asgardian people. And the people, as a rule, did not hang around palaces all day. They were more likely to be found out and about, in markets and workshops and eateries and training arenas, doing the work that kept them all safe and fed and comfortable. So those were exactly the places that Volstagg and Hogun deemed it necessary to go (and if they visited slightly more eateries and taverns than farriers’ or tailors’ shops, it was simply a matter of economy of speech and numbers of listeners.)

Of course, they did not begin at the usual meeting place of the four friends, being wise enough to see the need for a possible place to retreat. Instead their first stop was a somewhat danker tavern a few streets away, a place with smoke-blackened rafters and deep gouges in practically every piece of furniture attesting to the number of brawls that had occurred there over the centuries, and a deep, greasy, yeasty odor on the air lending proof of how much food and drink had been spilt upon the floor meanwhile.

“Now that we come to it,” Volstagg said from the side of his mouth, wringing his hat between his ham-hock hands as the two darkened the entryway, “I realize I have not prepared any exact words for this, and it occurs to me that saying exactly what is on our minds may not be the best idea.” He stared at the doors, refusing to budge until he’d come up with something less embarrassing to say than “we fear that Loki is using his power as acting king to turn the mighty Thor as meek as a young field-mouse.” Aside from the fact that Thor might not thank them for it later, and not to mention that put that way even Volstagg himself was unconvinced by it, it seemed unlikely to produce the response they were after.

Hogun, however, seemed to have no such compunctions, and he gave Volstagg a rough pat on the elbow and marched forth, and Volstagg had no choice but to follow.

“Somehow I feel I must be breaking some sort of promise to Hilde just by stepping inside this place,” he added under his breath as they crossed the threshold; it did have the feel of places that inevitably get men into trouble with their wives. At least he saw no dancing girls in the shadows within. Small mercies.

Hogun led the way, side-stepping a cheerfully hurled mug and deftly avoiding the smattering of broken crockery underfoot, all while calmly returning the baleful glowers of the grizzled patrons.

Together they took a seat at a cracked table near the center of the room, and Hogun managed to attract the barman’s eye enough to have drinks brought, lukewarm though they were.

Volstagg peered around himself with some curiosity once they got settled. Hogun’s eyes, on the other hand, were narrowed and sharp as knives, and Volstagg got the distinct sense that there was a lot going on under the trim of black fur on the grim one’s brow. Volstagg’s drink, nursed in one hand at least in part because of the seriousness of their errand rather than its quality, was half finished before Hogun made another move.

“It is all lies and vicious rumors. It is not true what they said,” Hogun said, just as a lull came in the conversations and sporadic hollering bouts that filled the sordid space.

“Who said wha—?” Volstagg answered, but before the words had even left his lips the heel of Hogun’s boot crunched hard against his toes. “Oooooooo—oooh, er, yes, of course it’s not true.” For a moment they glared at one another, but Volstagg began to catch on.

Hogun’s voice continued, in a low mutter in which only a few words rose above the general din, halting sentences expressing a strained certainty that King Loki surely had something else in mind, because although the trickster was no great warrior, he was no coward either. The din began to peter out, though, subtly, as other conversations faded away. This was just the sort of place where everyone was interested in alleged lies and vicious rumors.

“It is treason to imply that we are not currently splitting Jotun skulls because Loki is afraid to challenge them,” Hogun went on. “Undoubtedly the king has his reasons to delay.”

Volstagg mostly listened and offered low exclamations and murmurs of agreement, wondering at the sheer number of words from Hogun’s mouth (he suspected the man would not speak for the entirety of the next century to make up for it) and he sipped at his drink as Hogun gulped at his own, voice growing more darkly extravagant, nearly slurring, rising in volume and beginning to carry through the crowd. And nearly everyone in the room had begun, quite obviously, to lean closer to listen. The two of them were quite well known as friends and associates of the sons of Odin, and things that slipped from the loosened lips of such as they—well, it would surely be the veritable gold coin of gossip.

“No. I am certain he does not actually believe that a rabble of Jotun scum could defeat Asgard’s might. It is a vile lie, and I will fight anyone who claims otherwise,” Hogun finished in a growl that carried through the room.

“As will I!” Volstagg said, showing a row of white teeth as he looked around with as much obnoxious, drunken-seeming, self-satisfied challenge in his gaze as he could manage. It would not do to be seen as actually inciting rebellion; they were Loki’s friends, after all.

And they left the place soon after—left it seething. Everyone there had already been ready to complain of the glories stolen from under their noses, but it would have ended there, in grumbles directed at the bottoms of their mugs. But if the king’s friends were unsettled, if even Volstagg and Hogun had come to drown their doubts… as the two figures slipped away, a man with a scarred cheek and sitting near enough to have listened to their entire conversation said what nobody had dared to voice before:

“The mighty Thor would have fought the Frost Giants.”

It was as self-evidently true as the existence of gravity. Thor battle-hungry, Thor heavy-handed, Thor whose sport feeds crows; the thunderer had only been cast down because of his eagerness to fight the Jotnar. And now his judgment was needed, and they were deprived of him and given only the shadowy replacement of his younger brother. “Advising” clearly meant little.

Loki, a daring few whispered, should not be king.

Discontentment filled the air, fell into Asgard as salt into waters above a roaring flame.

And the two friends went on to the next place, and the next. By Hogun’s careful ear they attuned the tale to the audience, sometimes more subtle, sometimes more plain. Sometimes Volstagg watched from nearby as Hogun shared a few whispered words and sometimes they both waded into a crowd armed with thin reassurances that were not, after the fact, very reassuring at all.

It was not long before the waters began to boil.

Later Volstagg would muse about how almost shockingly easy it had been. “And how did you know such a thing would work?” he asked as they made their way back at the end of an evening.

Hogun looked at him and shrugged. “It is what Loki would have done.”

Volstagg put the brief tingle of uneasiness aside, because this was what they had to do, for Thor. Perhaps for everyone.

*

The first rays of dawn light shining through the window found Loki already up and moving, with only a glance back at the sleeping form curled in his bed before turning for the door.

No one knew precisely where Loki went in the mornings; no one saw him come or go and no one could account for the time. Rumors flitted among the servants of the palace and beyond. Some even said Heimdall had been heard to admit to having no idea of where the younger son of Odin went during those hours. Loki ignored the idle chatter, not bothering to answer it with so much as a dismissive shake of the head.

He did not care what anyone else thought. At least for the time, he was king and accountable to no one, and there were things that needed doing. And he made it a habit in part because he knew that he might easily ignore every other necessity and become completely wrapped up in toying with Thor. He could envision himself doing nothing else than that for years, going ever further, tormenting him until the realm rotted around them. So he set aside the time each day and forced himself to go.

The first thing was to keep an eye on Asgard and on the success of his rule.

Often he spent the mornings wandering the city of Asgard in shifted form, as a woman or an old man or a child. Once he found it expedient to wander as a domestic cat, sleek and black and largely ignored. In such shapes, unnoticed, he followed the trails of gossip and rebellion around the city of gods.

Merely as a practical matter, it behooved the king of the realm to have a sense of his subjects’ sentiments.

Often he watched in grim amusement as Hogun orchestrated the tempting release of information, with Volstagg nodding along as a good-natured foil. It seemed a shame that they had never shared this propensity for duplicity with him years ago; it might have offered a broader basis for friendship than merely keeping company with Thor. On one occasion, to satisfy his ego, he spoiled their game by sitting nearby in the crowd and taking up the banner of revolt with an unseemly enthusiasm sickening to behold, until the other patrons were practically ready to skewer him and would hear no more seditious talk from anyone. But mostly he did not interfere. Mostly he listened, and stayed after the two stirrers of discontent departed, for that was when folk spoke openly of Loki… and of Thor.

Of mighty, golden Thor. As uncontrollable as a storm, as bold and dangerous as lightning. Somehow being deprived of him made the people exalt Thor all the more, forgetting his faults and magnifying his greatness.

Loki listened, and with knuckles grown white he gripped the cup he had not even intended to drink. Their words raked across soft old bruises in him, and he trembled with delicious fury at the way they spoke of the perfection of his brother as if they had some claim on him— _our_ Prince Thor, they said. But they knew nothing about Thor’s perfection, and they knew nothing of how it felt to watch it break.

Often, after such excursions, Loki forced himself to seek the mutable pathways between worlds, trekking down them with his thoughts stumbling and a numbness inside. The route shifted around him until he found one of the islands in the stream, little pockets of cold, grey stone with hovering mists.

In some there were small pillars covered with carvings worn dull with age, markings he could not decipher and knew not the source of. Loki sat near one, flexing his fingers and calling forth ice, making it retreat and surge again.

He had been slowly learning these powers, hating them even as he did so and unwilling to test them in Asgard even in a hidden room sealed away with magic, but no one would ever find him here. His eyes glittered as he traced a line of creeping frost on the surface of a squat pillar engraved with layer upon layer of runes.

He was not a Jotun. He had brought along a small hand-mirror once, studying the red that took over his eyes, the blue that covered his face, but it didn’t matter. He was not a Jotun; he was a monster. Had Odin not plucked him from the ruins, had it been some hapless Frost Giant mother wailing for her dead babes who cradled him to her breast, he would one day still have been discovered as a changeling in their midst. This was the conclusion he had come to. It would show through one way or another.

He sent a cunning root of ice into the heart of the stone, delving through a single, small, perfect crack, made it swell until the rock groaned and gave a sound like bone snapping as it split down the center. He knew he was not a Jotun, because if he were, he would simply have killed them: he would have killed Odin and Frigga and Thor, would have torn through Asgard like a sudden hailstorm. He would have killed them, but not betrayed them.

He turned to the next small pillar, fingers brushing along its cool roughness careless of the destruction he’d already wrought on its fellow, and practiced a more valuable trick: he shifted between forms, keeping the cold reeled in close to his heart, locked inside, the touch of frost never quite reaching his skin.

Thus he occupied his time with practical matters in the few hours he had made himself set aside.

And sometimes, though far less often, he spent those mornings making brief but important journeys to other realms. Sometimes even to Midgard, with its multitudes of fragile, silly, resourceful mortals; with its men in mirrored sunglasses and its security cameras and its air full of fumes. Midgard, with its sleepy little towns amidst hot desert sands. Midgard, where Mjolnir still waited.


	7. Chapter 7

“Do you know what I’ve found out?” Loki whispered one evening as he lay curled around Thor, lips brushing against the soft hair behind Thor’s ear.

Thor shook his head.

“It seems it is easy to incite rebellion against me in your name.”

Thor frowned, uncertain, as Loki kissed his shoulder. “What?”

“That is what your friends are doing,” Loki murmured. “They’re going around planting the idea that _if only_ Thor were king right now, we would already be wading through Jotun blood and bathing in glory. They think if they stir up enough public sentiment against my rule, they’ll be able to rescue you from me. I never would have thought them clever enough for it. But there it is.”

“I never asked them to…” Thor began, but Loki interrupted him, his hand sliding over Thor’s mouth to silence him.

“I know, Thor. You couldn’t have. But they’re doing what they think is necessary.” Without removing his hand, he nipped at the tender skin of Thor’s neck. “I suppose under the circumstances it would look bad to have them killed. Shall I imprison them for their treasons? Or perhaps have them thrashed? That would be within the law, and surely it is still within my power. Shall I, brother?”

Loki was still nuzzling him, and Thor shivered, gooseflesh rising. He recalled the few times he had run into Sif or one of the Warriors Three over the previous weeks—brief, awkward, obviously contrived meetings in which they looked him over with suspicious concern as he made excuses and feared that what had come to pass would show in his face. He had avoided telling Loki about any of it, and in the back of his mind, he had worried that they might try to do something like this for his benefit. Of course, whatever they planned would inevitably fail against Loki’s cleverness, but he had not had a chance to warn them off of the idea. Under Loki’s palm he shook his head haltingly from side to side.

“Such a loyal friend you are. I hope they appreciate it.” Loki removed his hand and kissed him before drawing back and giving him an indulgent smile. “All right. It will be as you say. Just never claim I don’t give in to you now and then.”

It seemed Loki was in a strangely good mood, given the news, for he playfully stroked Thor to hardness and knelt between Thor’s spread thighs.

Thor gasped as Loki breathed across him and pushed himself up on his elbows so he could watch as his brother licked at the head with the flat of his tongue before dipping and sucking him inside. This was not something Loki did often, and the wet heat, the sight of his cock disappearing between Loki’s lips, the glint of green under heavy lids and black lashes as Loki looked up—it drew a helpless whimper from him at how much it seemed, for just a moment, that Loki was ceding control to him. Loki on his knees before him, trying to do no more than please him.

Thor felt guilty for how much he loved it. Guilty for wanting what he shouldn’t, guilty for wishing that it were true so devoutly that he had to clench his fingers at his sides until his nails cut into his palms, and forever aware of Loki’s glittering eyes gazing up at him, and he could nearly feel the tiny, satisfied smile that flicked through the lips stretched around Thor’s cock at his moans.

Thor felt guilty, but… mostly it simply felt good.

He was near the edge and writhing, pinned, when abruptly Loki released his cock from his mouth and drew back, his lips glinting with saliva and his hand still idly stroking along Thor’s shaft. With a chuckle, he blew on the wet skin, making Thor twitch at the cool sensation, and he let his cheek rest against the inside of Thor’s thigh.

“I’ve had an idea,” he said, seeming to take no notice of the way Thor’s breath hitched desperately with each motion of his hand. “I know you’re worried over how many would die in a war with the Frost Giants. But what would you say if I told you I’ve thought of a way to ensure that not even a drop of Asgardian blood would be shed in our victory over Jotunheim?”

“How?” Thor managed to croak. “What manner of trick…”

Loki’s other hand smoothed across his belly, intensifying the flutter trapped there. “I might have an idea for how to destroy Jotunheim completely,” he said, and he leaned forward to give Thor’s cock a series of warm, broad licks.

Thor felt like he was sinking. He couldn’t think straight—and of course that was the point of what Loki was doing, making Thor’s mouth form the word “yes” almost before he could stop himself. But he _couldn’t_. With a sob, he turned his face to one side, clenched his teeth, and resolved to say nothing if he could not trust himself to answer as he should.

To his surprise, Loki did not pull off and leave him unfinished as punishment for his stubbornness but instead gave a wicked little laugh and swallowed him down again, one wet finger sliding beneath him and pressing inside just in time to touch off the wave of pleasure that pushed through him.

It was only after he came hard down Loki’s throat and collapsed back, breathing heavily, that it really struck him what Loki had said.

“You cannot…” Thor gasped out then.

“Don’t you even wish to know how I have thought to do it?” Loki asked, moving away.

“No!” Thor said, aghast, brow furrowing. “You _should_ not…”

Loki’s light mood was cracking before his eyes, falling away in fragments. The half grin persisted, but it froze into nothing but bared teeth. “And why shouldn’t I destroy their whole wretched world? Why shouldn’t I kill every last one of those vile creatures? What reason could there possibly be to spare them?”

Thor was only able to gape at him.

Somehow, up until that moment he had believed that whatever had happened to his little brother had only damaged their relationship, not Loki’s whole being. He had believed that the Loki whose harmless tricks had sparked like fireworks and whose wit and charm had made Thor endlessly happy was still there. He had not seen that his beloved brother had turned into a person whose bitterness could burn everyone around him, a person who could propose the death of a whole realm without so much as a trace of hesitation.

“You pity them?” Loki said then in an alarmed whisper. “I watched you slay them by the dozen, and now you _pity them_?”

“I’m sorry,” Thor replied miserably, voice so low he wasn’t sure if the words left his lips, and he shut his eyes so he did not have to see the spite focused back at him.

With a hollow pain thumping in his chest, Thor understood then that Loki was beyond his reach. Somehow, while his eyes were turned away his brother had twisted and broken, and the pieces were too sharp-edged for him to handle, and the more he tried, the more he would bleed.

He had failed. He could not save Loki, could not change him, could not heal him. Maybe, he realized, it had been only his arrogance that made him think he could.

The days began to blur one into another after that, with a gutted, sick hollowness and a deep regret each time Thor thought of that night and what his brother had become.

*

Loki had barely spoken to Thor since that incident, anger burning within him like wildfire. He had avoided touching him, ignored him as if he did not exist, treated him as if he did not matter. Bitterness burning on his tongue, he commanded Thor as a master to a thrall when he did speak to him, and Thor crouched at his feet, head bowed.

Thor only looked up with a hurt expression whenever Loki called his name.

“Stop sulking, brother,” Loki said harshly, reaching to twist a lock of Thor’s silken hair around his fingers on one such occasion. “This is a mess entirely of your making.” Thor made no answer, eyes slipping back to the ground. But he obeyed, whatever Loki told him to do, and Loki took what satisfaction he could from that.

Outside, Asgard was a tangled mire of unrest, and after a lifetime spent being demeaned and passed over by the people of the realm, the dedicated work of Hogun and Volstagg was turning them all against him far more virulently. But he had Thor. He had Thor in every way he could want.

He had Thor at his mercy. He had kept his brother off balance, unsteady and uncertain, and he watched as Thor shattered a little more each day. The arrogant, self-satisfied look had been gone from Thor’s face for weeks, and now at last the look of idiotic trust had faded to match. He looked shaken and lost, consumed with sorrow and doubt and guilt, and Loki felt a strange glee and a trembling, nauseous emptiness in his belly at the knowledge. It was his doing. It was his triumph. He had wanted, needed, to see Thor with scars to match Loki’s own, and he had wanted to wring blood and tears from Thor, enough to paint across his own skin as marks of victory. He had wanted to take all he craved from the wreck that fell from his brother’s exalted pedestal.

As he looked down at the bowed blond head that leaned against his knee, obedient and sullen, he felt a strange craving spreading under his skin, a feeling of inexplicable discontentment that threatened to consume him. He hated Thor utterly, but there was one thing more he needed from him, and Thor would not give in.

But Loki had one last trick at his disposal. If one could not break a promise, one could always find a way around it.

*

When Thor woke up the next morning, Loki was gone. There was nothing unusual about this, and at first he paid no attention. By mid-afternoon, Thor realized that this was not simply another of Loki’s morning excursions, but he clenched his jaw and told himself that he didn’t care where Loki went. By dusk he had begun to pace. By midnight he was frantic.

It did not help that when he left Loki’s chambers for the first time in days and tore through the palace, accosting every servant he came across and demanding to be told where his brother was, he received nothing but blank looks and muttered excuses.

“The king does not say where he goes,” said one door-ward, looking him in the eye, expressionless, “nor what he does. That is the king’s prerogative.” At the time Thor merely shook his head like a dog shaking off water, dismissing the implication of the man’s tone and caring only for the way his heart pounded. He continued on, bursting through doors and practically hollering Loki’s name as he swept through the halls. The only door he did not open was that to Odin’s chambers, and that only out of a twinge of shame—he had not been to visit Frigga in a week, and he didn’t want her to worry anyway. Not until there was clear reason to. He certainly didn’t want to have to explain.

He had ventured outside, looking around in desperation for some sign of where Loki might have gone, and in the dim indigo night of Asgard there had been a few people walking amongst the trees and closed blossoms of the gardens, but all shied away from him as he came, and all whispered as he rushed past.

When the wee hours of the morning came and his brother still had not returned, Thor returned morosely to Loki’s chambers and curled up before the fire, crushing the pile of soft furs in his arms and staring into the flickering flames until at some point he fell asleep without noticing. Only a little while later he woke again, startled by some sound, and paced back and forth as he waited.

He did not eat, barely paused, chewed his fingernails down to the quick, felt the racing of his pulse and his breaths. He did not know where Loki could possibly have gone, and his disappearance unsettled Thor in ways he could never have named.

*

_“Who’s to say they won’t try it again? Next time with an army.”_

In the distance, a ragged muster of Frost Giant soldiers like a shifting shadow under a clouded sky. A deep rhythmic tramp of feet like a far-off drum, punctuated with occasional faint shouts and the forceful swing of weapons held in hand. In this icy realm, the urge to vengeance for the regicide did not boil like Aesir blood; it was instead a jagged bloom of frost in the midst of night…

That was what Loki was expecting to find, at least, as he stepped out of the grey spaces onto the frozen ground, the dry, cold air of Jotunheim rasping in his lungs, his own voice echoing in his mind.

What he found in truth was stillness and silence, the same empty planes of dark ice that he had crossed with when it all began. The same tumbled ruins among which he had come to find the Jotun king to make his offer.

No one. There was no one to be seen. No army readied and waiting for the assault that would surely come.

Suppressing the queasy discomfort that wormed through his flesh, Loki let himself shift into Jotun form as he strode onward across the empty wastes. The snow kicked up white at his feet, the cold breeze stirred his hair, smelling of salt and clouds and endless winter. The farther he went, the more uncertain he became and the quicker his steps.

He saw no one, heard no voice, crossed not so much as the print of a snow-hare. From what he could see, Jotunheim might as well have been wholly dead already.

Miles away, he came across a settlement at last—it did not seem it could be called anything else, a mere haphazard grouping of rough shelters apparently pieced together from the material of older structures—and he felt a chill that had little to do with the air as he crept at its edges, for even there he did not find what he had expected. No preparations. No chatter of ill tidings. Only a handful of giants with hunched shoulders and cragged frowns who shrugged when he asked about Laufey.

With their king and his son slain, Jotunheim had not arisen and made ready to fight their ancient enemies, and whether it was because things were different here or because they simply did not _care_ , Loki could not begin to guess. But it meant there would be no war against the Jotnar. He would never have an excuse to turn the Bifrost on Jotunheim until the energy of the bridge tore it into a trillion motes in the darkness, so that he would never again need to be reminded of what he was. The itch in the deepest, blackest corner of his soul would never be satisfied.

A few wet crystals were still melting upon his eyelashes and on the trailing edge of his cloak when Loki returned at last to Asgard.

As he stumbled back home, he found himself thinking of Odin, the man he had thought was his father, imagining a long-ago day when the Allfather had seen some reason to rescue a Jotun infant from the ruins. Loki had many times been told that there was a purpose to everything Odin did—but surely Odin had intended none of this. If he had been able to foresee in that small blue monster-child a man who would enslave his son and steal his throne, surely he would have smothered it with one bloodied palm.

Loki could almost have laughed at that, amid the wreckage of his own plans.

He remembered believing that he would be able to prove himself to Odin, that he would be able to prove himself a worthy son. When that belief had shattered, he had been certain he could use rule of Asgard to bring himself the satisfaction he craved. He had thought he could destroy the Jotnar, thought he could break Thor in his hands and savor the taste of Thor’s heart on his tongue.

Ever since this all began, he had been trying to force the world into a shape that would suit him, believing that if he did everything just right, he would have what he desired. But it had all gone wrong.

With the warmth of Asgard’s night enclosed around him, Loki was already halfway to the Allfather’s chamber instead of his own before he realized where his feet were taking him. The hour was late, of course, but he would only stay for a moment; it had been too long since he had—

Frigga met him at the door.

“Mother,” he said, surprised.

*

Frigga had been weeping for hours, and her eyes burned with it.

She had been growing more and more uncertain for weeks. At first she had not wanted to meddle in her sons’ troubles. Fulla had told her of the discontentment brewing in the realm as well, but she had trusted that Loki could manage it without her interference.

But when she had heard of Loki’s disappearance and Thor’s panic, she had been able to keep herself from taking action no longer.

Now her loom sat at one side of the room, the weaving it had produced still strung upon it.

She had seen in the patterns looped within it what Loki had done, and she had stopped weaving when her vision swam with streaming tears. The cruelty of it—the cruelty of what Loki had done to his brother… Frigga had found herself shaking with fury as she trailed her fingers over the work she’d done. Yet there were other things she could read there…

Now she stared at her cruel son who had arranged to be able to torment his brother at will. Her broken son who had manipulated his own brother into his bed. And she could not make herself say a word. She thought of Thor, thought of how many times he had sat beside her and never admitted what was truly troubling him, and she wanted to weep again.

“Mother?” Loki repeated, a look of concern coming across his face, but she realized he could not see her expression clearly; she stood with her back to the light. He probably could not even see the red that rimmed her eyes.

He took a worried step nearer… and stopped short when his eyes flicked upward, and she knew he had seen her expression, and the loom behind her in the corner, her work still upon it.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

She shook her head. “No. I am not. I have seen what you kept hidden.” He seemed about to answer, but she did not let him, fury rising cold, fists clenched tight at her sides to keep it in check. “How _could_ you, Loki? You gave me your word you would protect your brother and try to heal the rift between you. But in your heart, you had already broken that vow before you spoke it. How could you?” She did not shout, but only barely.

Loki’s eyes flitted, hunted; he bit at his lip. “I never meant…” he began, pleading and sounding almost like a child, like her clever son, who she had once lavished with affection as he chased adoringly after his elder brother.

“But you did,” she said, as sharply as she had ever spoken to him, and he flinched as if struck. “Do not lie to me again.”

She watched from arm’s length as he blinked and took an impulsive step toward her, and she held up a hand. “ _No_ , Loki. I cannot speak to you right now, not without saying things we would both regret. Leave me, and do not come again unless I send for you.”

He had blanched completely, and now he stared at her and gave a nervous laugh. Then without a word—without a breath of apology or the slightest attempt at justification—he followed her command, turning and walking quickly away.

She almost breathed her own sigh at the depth of the relief that rushed through her when he was gone, and she trailed back into the room, to the golden glow by which she kept vigil, and sobbed against her husband’s limp hand for what had become of their sons.

A little while later, when she had finally calmed enough, she went back to the loom to finish the rest of the weaving, for what had formed under her fingers before was what was past, and what she needed now was to see what was yet to come. She had to intervene, somehow, to stop this ruin—she would go to Thor and tell him she would not allow his brother to hurt him any longer, she would take back the scepter, she would…

Frigga’s entire body was tense as she watched the pattern unfolding relentlessly before her eyes, and the tension did not bleed away until the loom clacked at last to a stop. She did not move for some time after that. And when at last she did, it was only to trace a fingertip along a certain thread whose path she had followed, lingering over it as if it were the last warm ray of sunset before an endless night.

*

In the night hush, the door to Loki’s chambers creaked loud as he at last strode through it, and Thor was already on his feet, looking as if he had caught himself from rushing forward anxiously, as if he wanted to throw himself at Loki for his absence.

As Loki eyed him, though, he restrained himself, arms stiff at his sides. His gaze flitted across Loki’s form, took in the dark ribbon of moisture on the hem of Loki’s cloak and his disheveled state. “Where did you go?” Thor asked, accusing.

“It’s none of your concern,” Loki said, his throat taut. “But it doesn’t matter anyway. I won’t be leaving again.”

Loki saw now where he had truly gone wrong. At each step of the way, he had only thought of the next, the next—those he had planned in perfect detail, keeping himself occupied with avoiding every nuisance in his path. But he’d never truly thought of where it would all wind up. If he had, he would have seen that the end was inevitable.

Now he knew.

Thor furrowed his brow as Loki passed him without another glance, sliding off his outer garments and tossing them absently aside as he headed into the other room.

The only comfort Loki had that night was that without even being commanded to, eventually Thor followed.

*

The days after Loki’s return were dark ones in Asgard. There was a pensive silence in the air, like a forest from which all the small things have fled and the rest hold their breath. Thor thought at first he was only imagining it, or that it was just Loki’s dark mood rubbing off on him. But after several days, the feeling grew profound enough that he gathered his resolve to go about beyond the rooms he had been secluding himself in for so long to see if there was any real cause.

He trod through empty halls, his footsteps ringing in the quiet. He saw hardly anyone else; even the servants, it seemed, had disappeared, leaving only a handful of guards bound there by duty, standing still as statues at their posts.

When Thor approached the door to the throne room, hesitantly, he found silence had encroached even there, and within an empty hall, his shadow stretching long across it.

His brother slumped upon the throne, his head propped on his hand.

A month ago, this room at this hour would have been filled with a steady stream of petitioners from Alfheim and Nidavellir and Vanaheim, not to mention those of Asgard come to the king of the high realm for aid.

“What is this?” Thor asked once he had come to the end of that solemn space. Only then did Loki lift his head.

Loki looked around, as if there were nothing strange about the scene before him. “What is what? It is the same throne room it has ever been.”

Thor stared at him. “But there is no one here!” he asked.

At that, Loki smiled. “Yes, no one wants to be here when the storm comes, if you’ll pardon the expression. The nobles have all recalled urgent business elsewhere, and the petitioners have decided their problems are not so unsolvable. Even Rannver,” Loki added with a chuckle. It echoed. Then Loki gave Thor a considering look and stood. “And even I; I think there is no reason for me remain, under the circumstances.”

As they walked together back to Loki’s chambers, Thor found himself unable to get the image out of his head, of Loki sitting there in shadow, ruling over an empty court, his entire body sagging listless on its frame, and only the tip of Gungnir clutched in his hand still catching the light. But worse was the thought that the scene was only a reflection trembling in the water, a reflection of the realm outside falling into turmoil.

He remembered his frantic search for his brother and all the wary eyes espying him from corners, the rustle of whispers—he had cringed, drawn his shoulders in as if they might ignore him if he became small enough, and he had felt the unkindness of their words beating upon his back like rain, but now he realized perhaps he had misunderstood. Perhaps it had been fear and suffocating concern following him, too hesitant to speak. If this was how bad things had become in Asgard, if all anyone knew was that the heart of the realm had been cast into shadow…

“Why do you not do something?” Thor demanded, agonized, almost as soon as the door had closed behind them, unable to restrain himself any longer. “Why do you not put a stop to all this doubt and chaos?”

Loki sank wearily into a seat by the hearth before answering. “It was nice to see you out and about. It has been a while. Did you go to visit Mother as well?”

Thor shook his head, guilty. “No,” he admitted. “But… but do not ignore me! I want you to tell me why you have done nothing to prevent this!”

Loki paused to gaze at Thor with absent eyes, then went back to his dark contemplation of the fire. “It’s touching you think I ever could have. But it’s gone too far for that now.”

“You mean to let the realm fall apart?” he asked, barely able to force the words past his throat. He wanted to demand answers—how Loki could care so little, how he could sit on the throne of Asgard and be content to perch upon it as a vantage from which to watch everything burn.

“It won’t matter in the end,” Loki said quietly.

For several minutes, Thor fumed and fidgeted and tried to understand how Loki could care so little, how he could sit on the throne of Asgard and be content to perch upon it as a vantage from which to watch everything burn. But by the dull look on his brother’s face, Thor knew his anger would be futile. The only hope was something else entirely.

He got down on his knees and begged, leaning his head to rest against Loki’s knees, breathing the leather scent of his boots in a slave’s pathetic plea. “You must do _something._ Please, brother,” he said. “You must at least _try_.”

As he glanced up to gauge the effect of his efforts, Loki looked him over, a vague smile twitching on his lips.

“You don’t understand, Thor. You think I am _choosing_ this. I am not. This has been inevitable from the very first moment, as I have lately been forced to learn. And my unforgivable crime—the one with which I have offended against all of Asgard—do you know what it is?”

Thor furrowed his brow and opened his mouth but quickly closed it again.

“It is that I am not _you_.”

Thor looked away, feeling his own helplessness, and he could not help but wonder if perhaps Loki was right.

*

The rumors had quickly spread farther on their own than two pairs of feet could have carried them, and only a little while later had gained such momentum as a snowball thrown carelessly down a mountain slope. And soon the four friends found themselves in the role of leading and directing rather than inciting.

For his part, Hogun was glad. As Sif and Volstagg discussed measures to be taken and how long they could reasonably wait as they gathered support, he was able to fade into the background, thinking of what the others overlooked.

He thought it strange: little had been heard from the ersatz king. Loki had taken no measures in preparation. He had not proclaimed them traitors, though he could have. But Hogun did not know the meaning of his silence, and he did not like not knowing.

Ever since they were young, Hogun had found Loki to be a mystery. The trickster, who kept himself aloof when he was not tangling the unsuspecting in his lies and laughter—the others had always seemed to believe it, but Hogun had believed there was more to him than that. Something darker, hidden, and perilously fragile.

He glanced over his shoulder at where Volstagg still nibbled thoughtfully at a chicken leg as he peered at a map of the city, and Sif beside him, focused and unsmiling, and Fandral hanging back, trying to look not uncomfortable but merely bored.

Then he looked out from the same tavern—now the headquarters of the revolutionaries—at a hint of shadow that moved in a high window of the palace.

He tried not to think that the shiver that ran through him was a premonition.

*

In a secluded part of the palace gardens, Loki broke off another twig in his hands under a dull grey sky, the storm approaching.

In this garden he and Thor had spent countless hours as children, when they were still too young to be allowed to wander beyond the grounds. The place looked much the same now, even if everything else had changed.

He could feel himself slipping, and he did not know why his feet had brought him here, of all places. The memories that lingered among the greenery had no power to soothe him. Long-ago days of fighting Thor with sticks for swords, wrestling each other on the soft, lush grass while their mother watched over them… that happiness now seemed thin and false, a dream of what could never truly belong to him.

This was all inevitable.

Restless and brimming with frustrations he had no way to relieve, he snapped away another slim, limber branch, its bark a rich brown, its wood a living green, a few tiny budded leaves along its sides.

After a while Loki looked down at the bundle of damp, dark twigs in his hands, the smell of birch upon them. Little fragile twigs, weak and tender.

He stared as if seeing them for the first time.

Minutes later, he found Thor slouched against the windowsill in Loki’s chamber, staring out as if lost in thought, and though Thor turned at the sound of his footfalls, whatever he might have been about to say died on his lips.

“Loki?” Thor said, faltering as he took in the jagged tension in each step Loki took nearer to him. Something was amiss, and Thor knew it, and Loki saw the flourish of worry and the roil of confusion in his eyes as Thor recognized the dark tangle in his hand, the limber birch switches Loki had cut.

Such a thing had never before touched Thor’s flesh. An implement for the correction of deviants and misbehaving peasant children—it would not do Thor any permanent harm, even weak and mortal.

But it would hurt. It would humiliate. And at Loki’s low order, Thor stripped himself naked, moving as if in a fog, and slowly, hesitantly put his hands to the wall. He was a sight: his bare skin, pale pink but already flushing with the pounding of his heart. The unresisting, despairing spread of his feet. His broad, well-muscled back, the illusion of his old strength, shifting and trembling as he held himself still, waiting for his brother to begin beating him like a dog without a word of explanation. The shadowed blue of his eyes as he turned his head, trying to watch Loki’s movements behind him in the corner of his vision, afraid but trying to conceal his fear.

Loki relished the sight, and he flexed his fingers around the birch bundle, gripped it tighter, as Thor turned his face forward again, staring at the wall inches from his nose.

Thor yelped at the first bite of pain across the backs of his legs. He flinched at the whistling rush of air as the second blow came. A hiss, a gasp as the birch came down again sharply against the meat of his thighs and buttocks in a quick, uneven rhythm.

Crisscrossing red welts appeared on his flesh in stark contrast. The uncontrollable cries from between clenched teeth blunted into guttural grunts of animal pain, and Thor leaned toward the wall as if he could sink into it to escape the blows, dug his face into his forearms.

It was a wave of power rolling down from shoulders to wrist. The final flick, repeated until all grace was gone. Loki felt his own motions like a spasm, a convulsion, a frenzy. He could not have stopped if he’d tried.

As Thor began to squirm, Loki put his free hand to Thor’s shoulder and gripped hard, both subduing and steadying as he pelted him with more, again, more. From where he stood just behind him, he could see the waver of Thor’s lips moving near-silently, forming pleas for mercy, pleas to know _why_ , and Loki fumed and clenched his teeth to hold back what he might say. _The beautiful fool wouldn’t even defend himself. He didn’t even have the spirit left to turn and tear the instrument of pain from Loki’s hand. What was_ wrong _with him? Weak and despicable and pathetic and how could Thor still—_

With a hiss between his teeth Loki laid into him, bringing the bundle of switches down onto the reddened skin, his own heart thudding, hot rage and cold desperation.

A particularly harsh blow. A vivid line of red appearing low on Thor’s back, glinting in the light, and Thor slumped forward as the redness trickled down, down, down his leg, down the tender inside of his knee, slowing and darkening. Loki felt a knot tensing in his stomach at the sight and tasted blood in his mouth; he had bitten into his own tongue.

The birch cracked in his hands in the silence that followed, splintering and folding into pieces, and he threw it down at Thor’s feet as he turned and fled.

*

When he returned only minutes later, Thor was crumpled on the floor with drying smears of blood on his legs and hands, his backside covered in bruises already turning a dark, mottled purple, his proud shoulders bent. Loki stalked toward him. Thor’s face, half in shadow, was haggard and wet with tears and sweat and he was hastily wiping at his nose with the back of his hand—leaving a streak of red there, mingled with the tears and sweat on his cheek—when Loki wrenched his head upward by a hank of hair in his clenched, trembling fist.

“Am I still your dear, beloved brother, Thor?”

Thor glared up at him but made no answer.

“No? Then this should please you. I will give you one chance. Tell me to destroy Jotunheim and I will give you your freedom. Tell me now and I’ll release you from your promise and you can be rid of me.”

“Damn you, Loki,” Thor growled, swallowing with difficulty, baring his teeth. “You can go to Hel.”

Loki’s eyes widened, confounded. “That race of monsters is worth more to you than your own skin? Or do you not have brains enough to know that I will keep tormenting you forever if you let me? I will never get my fill of it, Thor, never, so give me what I want before I destroy you completely.”

Thor shook his head in refusal, tugging painfully at the roots of his hair in Loki’s grip.

And for the first time, his eyes glinted with hatred as he stared back at his brother. Something inside Loki sang at the sight. Suddenly he felt barely able to breathe, and he wrenched Thor closer, using his other hand to cup Thor’s face.

“So you’ve finally decided you don’t like me anymore?” he whispered, the corner of his mouth twitching. He could not resist leaning to press his forehead against his brother’s, fingers against the soft scratch of Thor’s beard, brushing his lips through the red-tinged moisture on Thor’s face. He sighed at the taste of salt and iron, swallowed it eagerly.

A muscle in Thor’s jaw jumped at the touch and his eyes twisted away.

His brother had decided to not give him the satisfaction. Every sinew was tensed to resist—sitting there on the same hard, cold floor he’d stared at as Loki beat him, and the pain certainly still fresh and throbbing under his skin. Thor’s face was turned slightly away, teeth clenched down on empty air, perverse pride holding him still against all this provocation. A steel-eyed façade, his mouth a tight, angry line.

Loki smiled and sighed. Thor had to know he could not resist him; Loki had learned well enough how to use Thor’s body against him, and Thor was not strong enough to force him away.

The fact that he was trying not to respond—the fury tensed tight as a spring within him—was all the lure Loki needed.

“You don’t need to like me, brother,” Loki said, almost laughing as he ran possessive hands over Thor’s form and pushed him down onto his back. “But you’re still mine.” Loki crawled down, sank his teeth into the aching curves of Thor’s muscles, breathed hot, damp breath on his belly and teased at the perfect red-gold curls of hair between his legs, and Thor resisted silently, refusing to respond, refusing to watch or to move or to make a sound. But he could not keep his cock from hardening under the motions of Loki’s lips and tongue.

Thor tried to swallow back the sound of shock, a gasped whimper that he held behind his lips as Loki shed his own clothes and climbed atop him, reaching back to hold Thor’s prick steady.

It was strange how panicked he looked as Loki sank down the thick length of it in one smooth stroke.

Loki laughed, shifting and rocking to let himself adjust to the sensation, reaching to stroke the damp hair back from Thor’s temples with his thumbs.

Thor’s face twisted at his touch, with sudden ferocity. “Bastard,” Thor growled, grinding out the word between gritted teeth and bucking suddenly up against him, knocking the breath from his lungs.

“Yes, brother,” Loki laughed in delight. “Yes, and worse than that.”

Thor was far too weak to hurt him, but he was furious enough to try, and Loki let him. He allowed it as Thor gripped his hips to thrust up into him, finally lashing out, attempting to repay Loki’s cruelty. Thor struck at him and clawed at his back like a beast, clamped white teeth down on the pale curve of a shoulder, bucked his hips up, fucking with all his pent-up anger and frustration that he had buried so deeply since the ordeal had begun.

Loki allowed it when Thor rolled them both over, shoving Loki down onto his back and pushing his knees up against his chest. Thor was brimming with rage, and Loki felt his body undulating in answer to it, his face flushed. He wrapped arms around his brother’s waist, taking advantage of the access the position gave to the welts and new bruises he’d left, and he dug his nails into them. An indignant whine escaped Thor’s lips, and Loki laughed.

Loki let Thor wrench his arms up over his head to stop him from continuing in that manner, and he let Thor pin his wrists there. Weak for a god, strong for a mortal, and so beautiful in his anger. And Loki found himself thrilling at the force of Thor’s vengeful thrusts. His breath caught at the twinges of ache as Thor pounded into him and at the notion that finally Thor was beginning to understand.

“Why is my pain the only thing that pleases you?” Thor demanded in a broken, furious rumble pressed against Loki’s skin as he kissed him, biting at Loki’s lip until he drew blood.

Loki gave no answer, only tightened his legs to draw Thor in deeper until the rhythm of his thrusts fell apart entirely. Thor’s snarl was a lick of flame on Loki’s skin, caressing him and burning him at the same instant.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm gonna try to go back to posting two chapters a day over the weekend. Don't want to keep everybody in suspense too long. Do let me know what you think so far!


	8. Chapter 8

It is generally impossible to conceal the formation of an army. As is well known, an army marches on its belly, and the flow of food, supplies, and other necessary comforts from the surrounding area to the gathering force creates a torch-lit map to the threat of war that can be easily spotted from a realm away. But the mustering of men within the same city, under the very windows of the one they would fight against? This is another matter, especially in Asgard, among a people who sing of the glory of death in battle. Each man had his arms and armor waiting, gleaming in a back room or hung in honor upon the wall, anxious for use. The ordinary business of a people at peace concealed the shift of supply. Word could travel unhindered. But still, to a careful onlooker a fine tracery of signs was visible. A sense in the air of tension and waiting carried on the breezes like woodsmoke on a high wind or the faint odor of corpses under snow. Crows darkening the skies, wheeling against the grey in ever-growing numbers.

It would not be long.

*

Night had come to Loki’s chambers, dark and silent; the only hint of light was that which glowed through the open window, a somber grey gloom edged in deeper shadows. Within, Thor sat at Loki’s feet, his back pressed against the legs of the seat, head lolled on the armrest. By then he was actually used to such a posture, and he didn’t feel up to fighting it.

The night before, they had both reached completion, sweat mingling where skin pressed against skin, mutual hatred dripping and stinging in Thor’s eyes. Afterward they had rolled apart and lain panting until breath returned and the room’s air began to feel cold. Thor had nearly appreciated the chill on the burn of his abused flesh, and he had snarled and swatted at Loki’s hand when he saw it reaching for him out of the corner of his eye.

“Hush,” Loki had chided as he repeated the motion and drew a complicated gesture against the skin of Thor’s hip, murmuring a few words.

Thor had felt the cuts and bruises from the birch fading into a hint of numb ache and faint scars. But that, of course, was the only apology Loki gave.

Nothing had changed, and Thor’s anger lingered, familiar and newly uncomfortable, chafing at the edges of his mind. It seeped through his innards like creeping poison. It tinged his vision red. Never since he was a child had he been so angry and so helpless at once.

Now he stewed in silence, arms wrapped around his bent knees. He had been angry with Loki many times over his life, but this was different in ways he could barely comprehend, and the feeling rankled.

Loki had beaten him for nothing, for nothing but his own satisfaction—yet now he petted fingers through his hair as if Thor were his to touch as he wished, and when he stood and stretched and looked down to note Thor’s scowl, he only chuckled and tapped a playful, scolding finger against Thor’s nose. It was infuriating.

But mostly Loki had not said a word for hours, ignoring him and staring into the distance with an intensity that made Thor think of fire, sometimes getting to his feet and stalking the room with nervous energy and a hollow smile, radiating tension, eyes flitting anxiously. Thor could no longer imagine what went through his brother’s mind. Spitefully, he told himself he did not care.

Thor would have wanted to be anywhere else but at his brother’s side, but he could feel the storm approaching now, and he peered out at the sky.

From where he sat, all he could see was a heavy mass of clouds, deep as wet granite. The tossing winds carried scents of rain and lightning, an approaching storm in truth. The sight caught upon something within him—the once-god of storms tried to recall how it had felt to command that power—the crawl of electricity on his skin and the sure knowledge of his own might, things now so far away they had become like a half-recalled dream. It should all have been his still, but he was deprived of it because of Loki. Loki had done this to him, purposefully, maliciously. Thor’s hands clenched into fists, and he craned his neck to glance up at his brother’s face in shadow; the corners of his mouth turned down delicately, steepled fingers pressed against his chin.

As night fell, a murmur had grown in the distance, and now Thor could discern the sound of voices carrying on the winds. Cries and calls of a multitude, harsh and strident, and coming nearer. The stamp of feet and the clank of armor. A low rumbling din that seemed to come from everywhere at once, echoing off the bowl of the sky. He looked sharply at Loki.

Loki tilted his head and his lip quirked. “We did not bring the war to them, Thor. So they bring it to us,” he mused.

Thor twitched. “And it is of course my fault. Do you wish to whip me again? I can hardly stop you,” he answered. He heard the words, felt them, foreign and acrid in his throat.

Loki raised a critical eyebrow. Thor glowered back. Loki shook his head, dismissing the exchange.

As the moments passed, Loki peered at his fingernails and Thor ground his teeth together.

“It is terrible, is it not?” Loki murmured. “Knowing that I have brought Asgard to a place where it is willing to fight even itself, and that you did nothing to prevent it.”

It was an idle statement meant to rile him of course, but the casual meanness in Loki’s tone was enough that Thor wanted nothing more than to shout at him to silence his tongue. Yet the lessons of the last weeks could not be so easily unlearned. The sudden flare of anger dropped within him until it simmered in the pit of his stomach and he stared out the window again and made no reply. Loki had known it would come to this. Perhaps he had even done it on purpose, just to punish him. To punish him _again_.

A rusty light floating up from the city brushed the cloud bottoms in red, the light of fires and torches all streaming through smoke. All Thor could do was wait and watch as Loki let the realm tear itself apart. He did not know what Loki meant to do when the people of Asgard arrived at the gates with their demands… demanding him. And demanding Loki’s head.

Thor felt his fingers tightening around the edge of Loki’s tunic, unconsciously winding. He made himself let go.

When a little later Loki stood and reached for his formal armor and cape, Thor clambered to his feet and took up the task himself, fastening the clasps and adjusting the hang of fabric on Loki’s shoulders. He held out the horned helm to his brother and watched as he put it on, seeming to become wholly a king, one the likes of which Asgard had never known. A king dark and terrible and magnificent.

“Come, Thor,” Loki said, reaching out a pale and graceful hand. “Your friends have so kindly brought an army to our doorstep. We must go to meet them.”

Thor could not but follow, wretched with anger and the bitterness of love.

*

Outside, under dim light reflected off thick, churning clouds, two Jotun skulls could be seen on poles at the gates, simply two masses of shadows and dark eye sockets watching over the people below. The flesh was gone, rotted away or pecked at by the carrion birds, and with it any obvious marks of identity, but the bluish-grey tinge of the bone marked them for what they were, as creatures not of the realm. As broken promises from the one who called himself king.

The broad doors of Odin’s hall were barred by metal and magical wards, and they were guarded by stone-faced men in armor, the tips of their spears glinting above. Those doors had stood fast against attack in ancient days, and the men who guarded them were all tested in loyalty and fortitude.

But neither soldier nor door had ever been tested by such a fate as this, for in the gloom of a sunless dawn, the other ranks of Asgard came to face them. Veterans of battle against the Jotun armies, and those who had survived combat against dark elves and fire giants, and those whose memories recalled the war of Aesir and Vanir; all were gathered there. And though their swords were as yet undrawn, they made their purpose clear through the grim silence they kept. They stood shoulder to shoulder, a shifting crowd halfway between a mob and a true army.

And it was clear as well who their generals were. At the front of their lines stood Sif, battle maiden, and Volstagg, the lion of Asgard. Behind them and to one side there could be seen Tyr One-handed, god of war, his presence in itself commanding to Asgardian hearts.

In the tower balcony Loki stood back in the shadows, listening and watching. Thor stood behind him, and he grumbled and muttered peevishly and shuffled his feet; Loki had ordered him to stay where he could not be seen from below.

For a moment Loki leaned his head back against the coolness of the wall and let his eyes fall shut. The sounds from below were a rhythmic cry, an echoing call that grew in volume and clarity until he could make out what they said: the crowd called Thor’s name, roared for him, demanded him. The name of Loki was spoken only in hisses.

Then came Sif’s voice rising above the din, ringing out like a sword being drawn. “Do you hear them?” she cried. “Do you hear, Loki?”

In a swift gesture Loki pushed himself away from the wall and stepped forward into view, and his dark hair was whipped about in the winds as he raised his hands, calling for attention.

Thor had many times seen Loki talk his way out of dire situations—though admittedly none like this. With a few words Loki could convince anyone of his earnestness and friendship. He could calm tempers and soothe injuries. With his tongue he could bend a dragon to his will.

Loki’s hands fell to curl on the railing. “Of course I hear. I see, also, but what could bring you all to such extremes? What have I done to anger you so? What do you want?”

Far below, Sif tossed her long braid and pierced the sky with her gleaming blade. “The realm demands its true king. The realm demands Thor. We will set him in his rightful place, by force if we must. Do not try to thwart us!”

“My friends, I would very much like to oblige you. I too would call for it, for has not Thor always been the best of us?” Loki began. “But it is not that simple—”

These words, though, came out flat and empty. Thor stared at Loki in confusion as his voice, dull with the ring of defeat foreknown, was lost in a chaos of jeers and shouts. Loki’s mouth fell softly closed, not even attempting to finish his speech.

“Your tongue is too well known for that, Liesmith!” Sif called. “Will you stand aside or will you stand in our way?”

Thor had edged forward over the passing minutes and by then he could just peer over at the boiling crowd, struck with awe. Around Sif, countless men banged fist upon breastplate, weapon upon shield. The clamor mounted for long moments.

Beside him, Loki’s shoulders sagged as he turned away and stepped back, his curled hand to his brow raking back through his hair. He paced a few steps.

“If it had been you,” Loki said suddenly, voice low and shaky and bleak, looking anywhere but at Thor’s face, “this would never have happened. No one would ever have doubted you, no matter what damnably foolish thing you did. They’d still have followed you.” The last word cracked and shattered into silence.

Thor blinked, because suddenly Loki was standing before him, avoiding Thor's gaze as he tried to force himself to speak.

“What would you do if I…” Loki swallowed and clenched his jaw and began again. “What would you do if you were king now?”

“What?” Thor said, confused.

Loki tensed and bristled. “I have _told_ you. This has always been inevitable. I can no longer…” he trailed off, shook his head. “What would you do?”

And then Thor understood. Loki could not fight all of Asgard, and only getting what they wanted would appease them. And his brother wanted to know first if Thor would condemn him or shelter him.

For a moment the pounding of Thor’s heart rushed in his ears and he sucked in rapid breaths and blinked away the blurring that plagued his eyes.

Loki had tormented him and abused him and beaten him. He had taken him into his bed, an act that should have been a fulfillment of the love that had always lain hidden between them, and instead mocked him for that love, humiliated him for his body’s responses. His brother was vicious and cruel and wished to end the lives of a whole world full of creatures. The light he had always cherished in Loki had gone dark, and his goodness had rotted away and twisted, turning as hateful and contemptuous as a forest of thorns. With every breath, anger still scraped at Thor’s insides at the thought of what Loki had done to him.

If Loki gave up the throne and made him king in hopes of saving himself from the people’s wrath… Thor could put him in chains. He could lock Loki in the dungeons, turn the key himself and leave him there until he cried and begged for pity. He could visit him every day to taunt him. He could send the guards away and step into the cell to pelt him with weak mortal blows and curses. He could hurt him, hurt him until what he had stolen was made Thor’s again.

“I would stop all this—I would stop _them,_ ” Thor said without hesitation, his guts twisting at the thought of his brother in pain. “I would protect you.”

Loki’s lips fell slack in a sigh, his eyes squeezing shut, brow twisted.

“All right,” he whispered, his voice weak, barely to be heard above the gale of wind and cries.

Thor felt his heart stutter, almost unable to believe that Loki had agreed. That it was over at last and that now they could begin to put the pieces back together, to make everything well again.

He did not yet know that the end was approaching on silent feet, waiting just beyond the door.

*

Those who watched from below had little to tell later of what they saw that day, the last day of Loki’s reign. They saw Loki step back away from view. They heard the shout as the small infiltration force arrived, led by Fandral and Hogun into Odin’s hall. There were loud voices and there was silence. There was a strange cold shimmer as of winter light. There was a dark speck winging across the sky. And then there was stillness, and a single figure coming back into view. He staggered, silhouetted against the light behind, and came to rest leaning on the railing, and his hand left a dark, dripping stain wherever it touched.

*

An hour before, Fandral had led the way through the halls of the palace. Beside him strode Hogun and a few of their force of loyal rebels—the only few who had been told the facts of Thor’s near-imprisonment by his brother and the true purpose of the revolt. Fandral himself was restless and ill at ease. At least here was finally a chance for action, after weeks spent playing spy and gossip-gatherer. While Hogun and Volstagg organized an army, he and Sif had applied themselves to studying how things stood at the palace; they had spoken to servants and felt out guards, listened in on conversations and in a few cases offered rather sizeable bribes.

At some point, he had wondered exactly how what had been meant as merely an elaborate ruse had turned into planning an actual insurrection on Asgardian soil. He wasn’t sure he approved of the change, though it seemed far too late to complain.

But here they were, and as he was the one most familiar with the current lay of the land, so to speak, it was he who had been the best choice to lead them on this most crucial mission.

The plan was that they would find Thor and spirit him away to safety while Sif and the army outside kept Loki distracted. The backup plan—if Thor happened to be _with_ Loki when they found him—was to confront him and force the issue. They would demand Thor’s freedom and Loki’s relinquishment of the rule of Asgard. Beyond that… Fandral hoped there would be no need for any plan beyond that. But the small force did not go unarmed.

As he led the group past doors that remained resolutely shut and guards’ stations that would ordinarily have been occupied by different men, he tried not to think too deeply on the situation. Ever since the last time he had seen Thor, he had been ignoring the uneasy feeling in his gut, the surreal notion that their guesses as to what was happening hit nowhere near the mark, too base and too simple. He could not help but recall the Loki who was once no more than Thor’s annoying and somewhat odd little brother, and he wondered how this had all gone so far from those days.

At the door of Thor’s chambers, the guard’s jaw clenched and he gave a shake of his head. They did not bother to try Loki’s door—he doubted they could have opened it anyway—but the guards at the end of the hallway gave a tiny gesture in answer, perhaps indicating a particular direction but willing to betray their duty no more than that. Thor was not there. Fandral frowned. They would not get so lucky, of course.

By that point, he knew, Sif and Volstagg would surely be at the gates, their army filling the yard beyond. The most likely place to which Loki would have gone to greet them was a certain empty chamber with a small balcony at a height above that yard, an aerie from which Odin had once watched over the city and looked out upon the stars. When they came to its double doors, the guards who stood on either side bowed their heads and stepped away. There Fandral paused, his hand already raised to push the doors open. Beyond them he could hear the low noise of the assembled crowd of Asgardian people, a mingled and seemingly omnipresent noise that filled the air until it became almost solid. Above the sound he could hear Sif’s words—words he had helped her to choose the night before while Hogun went off to make a few final arrangements with the city’s warriors and Volstagg sought out a meal that he pointedly avoided calling the _last_ before the battle.

Quieter and nearer, he heard the sound of Thor’s voice, and Fandral heaved an involuntary sigh.

There was no point in delaying further. It had to be done. With his arm held out stoutly in front of him and with Hogun beside him, Fandral shoved open the door and led their small troop through it.

*

Forever after, Thor had difficulty sorting through what he remembered to make sense of what had happened. It had been but moments, surely.

In a rush, a sudden light and a sudden shadow—the door was thrust open and filled with swiftly moving forms, Fandral and Hogun with a handful of men behind them. Just beyond the threshold they paused, taking in the scene.

In the time it took Thor to turn, the fearful resignation that had dragged on Loki’s expression disappeared, turning in an instant into a wry smile and a sidelong glance out and down upon the churning crowd before returning his focus to those that stood in the doorway. “Well,” he said, “isn’t this nice?”

And then Loki was stepping neatly between Thor and the intruders, his stance defensive.

“Loki, you must end this,” said Hogun from where he stood, his expression even more grim than usual. “Or we will.”

At the words, Thor froze, flooded with horror; his brother did not respond well to threats.

Loki lowered his head and glared from beneath his brow. “And what will you do?” he demanded. He tensed all over, his fingers splayed and near sparking with danger.

Fandral was stepping closer, and there was on his face a smile of cautious and deliberate calm. “Loki, it’s not as you think,” he said.

“No? I know your intentions,” Loki snarled. “I know your treachery. You have ever distrusted and despised me. I know it would please you to do away with me now.” His eyes flashed between the two and he moved in careful sideways steps as if expecting a sneak attack—or planning one.

But Fandral and Hogun had fought alongside Loki before, and they were already moving in response, Hogun reaching for the mace slung on his back, Fandral darting with agile ease to a spot where Loki would be forced to divide his attention to watch him.

A few more from outside moved into the room, fanning out across the space, ready to join the impending fight or to block any escape—in moments someone would begin it and blood would be shed, or worse. In desperation Thor found his voice, fumbled forward, demanding to be heard.

“Wait… My friends, please do not—”

But Loki’s hand caught him on the chest, pressed him firmly back toward the wall.

Doubt was thick on Fandral and Hogun’s faces. With dismay he realized they thought him under Loki’s sway. They would not listen. So Thor could only watch, breath caught in his throat, as his friends and his brother prepared to fight each other, peril hanging heavy in the air.

Loki shifted like a swaying snake. Thor could see his bright, thin panic in every motion. He might have been a beast backed into a corner, snarling and never more dangerous.

“No. You won’t get what you’ve come for,” Loki said to the others, his voice low. “I won’t let him go.”

“Loki,” Thor said, agonized, taking another step toward his brother, though later he could not recall what he had meant to say.

That was when it happened.

In that moment, Loki turned to push him back out of range once more, Hogun shifted his mace in his grip, and Fandral reached for his belt. It happened all at once in a blur of motion in the corner of his eye. It was a sudden maneuver. There was no mistaking it as the closing of a trap.

By instinct, Loki raised a hand, fingers curled to call upon his magic.

A blink, a flash, and Thor watched in stunned horror as instead of a gout of pale flame or a rushing wave of force, what Loki threw was a blade of ice, glittering with blue cold. It pierced Fandral’s torso, ripping between muscle and bone, its wet tip protruding. Fandral stood for a moment gaping at the wintry spear before he collapsed to his knees, the iron reek of blood already filling the air as it bubbled from his lungs.

Loki stared down at Fandral, and it was written all over his face that he hadn’t intended that. His shoulders rose and fell too fast, and he stared at the blood that spread unstanched across the smooth stone of the floor.

Any second, the spell would end. Someone—most likely Hogun—would dash to crouch beside Fandral and press their palms to his wound, and the others who stood transfixed in the doorway would move forward to advance upon Loki with their blades raised, and there it would end. Loki would be lucky to rot in the dungeons beneath the palace. He would be fortunate even to meet a swift and bloody end in this room rather than be torn to pieces by the crowd.

But in that moment, there was a brief shadow of wings as a raven flitted past the window.

Loki watched it with a heaving sigh, and then he spun on his feet and reached for Thor, extending his hand, his lips shaping the word “brother” in a face that was wrenched in a desperate plea.

A heartbeat later, Thor reached out his own hand in answer, and Loki’s fingers grasped it, and everything, for one moment, went dark.


	9. Chapter 9

There was a flutter of black feathers as the raven of Odin’s thought winged one swift arc past the balcony window, glimpsing what transpired within, and in that moment, the Allfather of Asgard awoke.

He sat bolt upright, intending to get to his feet at once. Consciousness nearly fled again as he tried it, with dizziness and Frigga’s hands pressing him back against the pillows, but that was all that stopped him.

“There is nothing to be done now,” she said.

Odin had woken many times to the sight of Frigga sitting at his bedside. Each time before there had always been a light within her. Now she reached over and clasped his hand, and in her face was shadowed with deep resignation.

“There is nothing to be done for either of them anymore. Nothing to be done but hope.”

He raised an eyebrow, and she told him of all that had occurred while he lay here. Whenever she looked away, pausing for a moment in the tale, the golden light glistened off her eyes.

Odin was still recovering, the ache of his wounds still vibrated within him. And the cold, unconscious sleep of injury, so different from the Odinsleep, had given him no true sight but instead a multitude of dreams that crowded around the edges of his waking. Dreams of blood and ice, of fire and ruin. The dreams crowded closer as he listened, envisioning it all.

“Yet a chance remains,” she added as she neared the end. “They have left together, so there is a chance. They may not both be destroyed.”

“And what chance that neither will?” he asked wryly. Whatever her weavings had shown her she would not tell precisely, of course. After so many years, Odin knew that.

The Queen then gave him a ghost of a smile. “The barest of chances.”

In the silence the other raven tapped its beak idly against the gilded metal of its perch and chuckled deep in its feathered throat.

And when Frigga leaned near enough to embrace him—the first relief of her lonesome burden in far too long—they spent some time in each other’s arms, unmoving.

There was a realm to piece together again. Odin would have to resolve the crisis his younger son had caused. He would need to decide what should be done with the instigators of rebellion against the throne, no matter who had occupied it at the time. He would have to send envoys to the other realms to notify them that word of civil war in Asgard had been rather exaggerated. None of it could wait until his sons were found, wherever Loki had taken them.

But it would damn well wait until he had the strength to stand.

*

Loki sat on a small pillar of grey stone, head in his hands, as Thor yelled. Thor had been yelling for some time, building from the first tremulous queries as they came through into the space between worlds.

“Loki… the ice… I have never seen you do such magic before,” Thor had stuttered as Loki pulled him along the pathways, winding deeper, pushing further from Asgard with each step. “When did you learn that? Why did you…”

Loki had not answered, instead tightening his grip on Thor’s wrist.

“Fandral would not have truly fought you. They were merely trying to protect me. He would not have wanted to harm you,” Thor said, voice rising, unsure.

“Yes, he would have,” Loki said through gritted teeth.

It was only then that Thor seemed to realize where they were, and he began to look around himself, his shoulders stiffening, pulling back weakly against Loki’s grasp.

Loki halted and turned to him. “We are between the realms, Thor. No one can find us here. Not for some time, at least.” He paused, watching his brother’s eyes as confusion filled them.

“We must go back. You said… you agreed…”

Loki tilted his head, frowning. “Odin has awoken; we have not left the realm leaderless, and I will not return to be scourged and punished, no matter how much you might wish it.”

“Loki!” Thor’s voice was strained.

“No, Thor! I promised nothing, and everything was changed when they arrived. They would have killed me, and there would have been nothing you could have done to stop them. Is that what you wanted? Would that have satisfied you?”

Thor shook his head in denial, still trying to grasp the situation, still trying to catch a breath that might have been left behind on Asgard. “But the ice…”

Loki drew in a breath. Then he let it go and drew in another and released that one as well. He stood stock-still. His face went blank, the anger and distress washing away.

And then the color, too, had left his skin, giving way to blue traced with darker lines and ridges. The green of his eyes darkened and changed, turning blood red. His hand was still locked around Thor’s wrist; Thor realized this only when he took a reflexive step backward and found himself held fast.

His heart pounded. It was an illusion. His brother could make himself look like a woman if he chose. He could impersonate a Frost Giant.

“I found out on Jotunheim,” Loki said, calm and low. “One of them grabbed me during the fight and I watched as my own skin turned before my eyes. I was not burned as Volstagg was.”

Thor tugged at his arm, his eyes gone wide.

“While you were on Midgard, Father told me—I made him tell me. I was a foundling, a Jotun runt taken as a spoil of war. Do you understand, Thor? All this time… it is no surprise how this has ended up. Odin brought a monster into his own house, fed it poison for years, and put it next to his true son.”

“Brother…” Thor gasped, a shadow of terror filling his heart.

Loki shook his head. “I was never your brother, Thor, not truly. You can see that. You can feel that.” And Thor did; Loki’s hand on his had gone cold, colder, cold enough to just begin to sting and burn like the depth of winter, though the cold withdrew a moment later, leaving his skin numb, sensitized, feeling the painful clench of Loki’s fingers in his bones. “I am an enemy of Asgard. It is no wonder I have always been hated there. They could all sense it. All but you.”

Then the blue faded and Loki looked like himself again. He flashed Thor a wan smile. And with that, Loki turned and strode onward, pulling Thor behind him, not bothering to look back.

The grey of the mists closed in around them.

Thor stumbled after him, in shock, unable to do anything else. His brother…

It should have changed nothing. But with each clumsy, helpless step, everything fell into place. The realizations pummeled Thor, hitting like gut-blows, knocking the wind out of him. They dazed him like flares of lightning, rushed like acid in his veins: The Jotnar that had been let in to Asgard. These hidden paths between realms. Loki’s maniacal desire to destroy Jotunheim. The disaster of his rule. The Destroyer. Thor’s promise. Each piece part of a greater pattern that Thor had not wanted to see.

Loki—cruel and vindictive Loki—had learned that he was Jotun before he came to Midgard to lie to Thor, to tell him that their father was dead. Thor envisioned Odin collapsing before Loki’s boundless wrath, but even that hadn’t sated him. He had turned his anger next on the one he had called brother for so long.

Choked with dread and horror, Thor dragged against the hand pulling him. Dark amazement overflowed and tipped the words from his mouth. “Did you bring them to kill Father? Did you? Has this all been your doing, Loki, all along?”

Loki whirled, and for a moment the corner of his lip quivered upward. “It occurs to you to wonder that only when I tell you this, even after I’ve spent so long showing you exactly what kind of monster I am?” Then, lower, meeting Thor’s gaze, unflinching. “Don’t be stupid, Thor. _Of course_ I did. _Of course_ it has. All of it.”

Thor stared, and for a moment he couldn’t believe. He had thought—he had _wanted_ Loki to deny it. He had thought that Loki would somehow convince him he was wrong.

Now he saw.

Loki—his brother, not his brother, a cold blue hand that had gripped his wrist and red eyes that had burned into his—had been lying to him the whole time. Loki had known everything and had done it all on purpose.

A bellow of wordless, indignant fury tore through Thor then. Before he realized what he was doing, he was thrashing against Loki’s grip and yelling. He thought he had been angry before. Now he shook with a rage he’d forgotten he could feel, one that seemed incomplete without the ability to shatter the roots of mountains. He yelled until his throat hurt, until his voice rasped. With his free hand he beat his fist against Loki’s chest until Loki caught that one up as well and held him at bay with silent ease until he ducked his head and sank backward in defeat. But still he shouted, screamed, loosing every word of betrayal and insult that he knew.

Somewhere in the midst of it Loki released his wrists and Thor reeled back from him in loathing. And amid the accusations that spilled from his lips—accusations that Loki did not deny, only meeting his gaze levelly and shrugging, accusations of heartlessness and villainy and evil and curses for what he’d done to Fandral and the realm and their family and to _him_ —Loki sat down on the piled stones in the clearing to which they had come. He just sat there, only occasionally glancing up at Thor as his outrage exhausted itself.

Eventually it did. He could barely speak, his head drooping forward, face streaked with tears he didn’t remember shedding, throat swollen, temples throbbing. He turned away, folding his arms across his chest and trying to master himself. After a while, hoarsely, he said, “What now?”

“Now?” Loki said, almost laughing, hands rubbing at his own face. “We will have to go elsewhere. We cannot stay here forever. The in-between is not really a place one can remain.”

“Take me back to Asgard,” Thor ground out.

“I won’t do that, Thor.”

Thor set his jaw. Asgard… if his father was awake, he could restore him. Thor could be whole again. And Loki would not allow it.

He took a few steps, sank resolutely to another of the grey stone pillars, facing away from Loki. Even when Loki came to stand in front of him, Thor turned his face away.

“We must go,” Loki said quietly. “Someplace where they will not be able to find us, even if they manage to follow us this far. They will be looking; _you_ are valuable and _I_ must suffer their vengeance.”

Thor did not reply, and he stared down at his own knees as Loki strolled to and fro in front of him. He couldn’t look at Loki yet. Did not want to hear his words, no matter what they were.

“Where I mean to take us will be dangerous for you, but I will protect you,” Loki said, pausing, and his voice was gentle and horribly earnest. “Do you trust me?”

This could not pass without a response—as Loki must have known it wouldn’t. Thor scowled up at him. “No,” he answered in a flat, dead voice.

Loki smiled, a dark twinge passing in front of his eyes. “Good. You aren’t a complete idiot, then. But I’m still taking you with me.” And then his lips were moving in silent words, a whisper of air between his teeth, a puff of breath, and Thor felt it: warm, soft tendrils of magic enfolding him, weaving about him like threads from his mother’s loom, lacing delicately against his skin, invisible.

He understood when they flickered through the divide and he found himself standing in the midst of a howling, grey plain of swirling snow. It was bitterly cold. The sky above was dark, but some mysterious glow outlined the distant mountains. Thor knew without asking that it was Jotunheim; without Loki’s magic, he would already have frozen to death. As a mortal unprotected he would not have taken a single step before the place stole every bit of heat from his blood, turned him to ice from within, blanched his skin with frost. He shivered anyway and watched his breath steam in the dry air.

When he turned to look at Loki, he was surprised not to see red eyes in a Jotun face, but only his brother’s familiar pallor and a mouth pressed into a line. And when Loki began walking, Thor followed.

*

Loki did not look back.

As the miles of frozen ground passed beneath their feet, Asgard—the home that had never loved him, the realm that had always held him up against Thor to be measured, the place that had scorned and despised him—Asgard began to seem distant. Already half-forgotten. A fading light at dusk.

It had been a flight from disaster, a last-chance leap from crumbling ground. He knew now it had been a fantasy to think that he ever could have given up what he’d taken. Even if he had wrenched himself into it, he could not have relinquished control softly enough to avoid the collective vengeance of Aesir hearts. What had happened… it had been inevitable. And it no longer mattered.

Here, at the far edge of Jotunheim, a place so barren, so desolate and forbidding that not even Frost Giants could eke out a living, there was space and silence and emptiness.

As they walked, the crunch of Thor’s footsteps followed like an echo just behind him. Thor had not spoken for hours.

They crossed flat, silent spans that had not felt the footfall of a living creature for an immeasurable time. They gazed out as the land fell away into winding chasms toothed with spikes of black ice. They stood in the grey shadow of mountains that rose across the landscape in impossibly high ridges, the bare, jagged backbone of this frozen world peeking dark through its pale skin.

It was a place no sun had ever warmed; a forgotten space of dead night, endless and cold. Windblown specks of snow pricked against Loki’s skin and stung in his eyes. He flexed his fingers at his side.

He had revealed the truth to Thor at last, and he had been so calm. He had been so dreadfully calm as he made his confession and _showed_ him the truth. He had been so calm, pretending indifference to the barrage of Thor’s roars of outrage that followed.

By this point in his life he was accustomed to Thor’s anger. He had waited it out, his flinches too minute to see, brushing his fingertips along his arm. Unthinking fingernails scraping at the skin, tracing the ghost burn of the ice magic that had come so quickly, so easily, overwhelming his thought even though he hadn’t called upon it. He hadn’t wanted that, but it had betrayed him—the monstrous, hidden part of him emerging bare and lurid in the slow spread of Fandral’s blood on the floor.

He had been so calm, _so calm_.

A tremor sluiced through him, under his skin. A sudden icy twinge tensing in his fingertips as he pulled the folds of his cape closer around himself. He was glad of the ferocity of the cold, the involuntary shiver, for how it gave an excuse to curl protectively around himself, arms wrapped across his middle. He glanced back at Thor through the blowing whiteness.

His brother had his head bowed against the wind. Pale flakes clung to his hair and his beard, and when he looked up to see Loki watching him, his mouth twisted in fierce distaste.

Loki was so calm now, knowing at last the sensation of having Thor truly hate him. It was practically a relief. He had been waiting for it for so long.

“Where are we going?” Thor asked in a low grumble. He had stopped, breathing clouds of white mist and staring back in the direction they had come, watching as their footsteps in the snow were blown away, covered, erased as if they had never been.

Loki had brought them as far from anywhere that anyone would think to look for them as he could imagine. They could wander for months without ever meeting another living thing.

The frigid wind that brushed against his cheek was the heaving, shuddering breath of the realm. The essence of the Jotun world was a slow, creeping, shifting malevolence under their feet.

He had brought them back to where it began. It had begun, truly, in the moment when the Bifrost had deposited him and Thor and the others in the snows on a forbidden journey. Watching Thor stride out, the contrast of red against deep ice blue, confident and bold and _so foolish, how was he the only one who could see that, how was he the only one who knew, who watched, who felt so—_

The frozen air had a bitter taste on his tongue. It was all his own handiwork. Everything since that moment was his doing. He had begun it here on Jotunheim, and now he had brought them back.

Loki’s eyes reflected the dark chasm before them as he answered. “Nowhere.”

Thor halted. He huffed and gaped. “What?!”

Loki snorted. “Keep up,” he snapped, just for the sake of things, before turning away and trudging onward.

And then there was nothing but darkness and cold and the soft plodding of their footsteps.

*

Upon a ridge they stumbled, slow and unsteady, laboriously skirting the crevice where a great rend in the frozen ground had opened before them. Spikes of black ice shot up from below; if one looked closely enough at their shining surfaces one could see frozen in the ice tiny, ancient organisms, miniature horrors with spiraling bodies or armored backs. Thor tried not to touch that ice, though this meant he instead had to grasp at Loki for balance. He seemed to try very hard not to do either.

It was impossible to track the hours in that dark and sunless realm, without the wheeling of the stars visible through the snow-thick clouds above. No shadows lengthening and deepening, no evening quickness of beast and insect. The far mountains seemed always at the same distance. The endless wastes a deep blue-black blur like a bruise.

Every so often, compelled by weariness, Thor would force a halt, sinking to a crouch in the snow, eyes narrowed as the icy winds gusted and fell around them.

“So this suits you now?” he asked once idly, gesturing out at the shadowy landscape when Loki’s eyes met his.

“Just as well as it does you,” Loki snapped back, chucking an annoyed handful of snow into the air.

Minutes passed in uncomfortable silence.

“I am hungry,” Thor said in grudging complaint. “Have you forgotten that your pet requires food? Or do you simply mean me to starve?”

Loki returned a bare few minutes later, popping back into existence carrying a pack full of waybread and various foodstuffs and even a waxed round of cheese.

Thor glared daggers at Loki as he took his first ravenous bites of bread. “Alfheim. And you leave me here.”

“Do not try to tell me that you wouldn’t have attempted to escape if I had brought you with me.”

Thor tore into a piece of dried, salted meat to go with it and didn’t answer until he’d swallowed. “I gave my oath that I’d obey you. Just because you think nothing of lying to me doesn’t mean I am the same.”

Loki watched him and sighed, rolling his eyes. “Yes, Thor. Everyone present is well aware of how noble you are. Particularly in comparison.”

“That is not difficult to accomplish,” Thor spat.

“So spiteful, brother. I would hardly recognize you if I didn’t know.”

Thor looked away, eyes unfeeling, as he took a few more anxious bites. “Why will you not let me go home?” he said at last.

“Because it pleases me to keep you with me, and _I_ cannot go back to Asgard.”

Thor gritted his teeth as he answered. “So why did you bring _us_ to Jotunheim?”

“Because,” Loki replied, with weary patience, “it is where none will ever search for us.”

Thor made a noise of disgust before getting to his feet and dusting the snow from his clothes.

“He cannot restore you,” Loki called after him.

Thor spun on his heels. “What are you talking about?”

Loki, still sitting on an icy stone, perched his chin on his hand before answering. “I merely mean I’m almost certain that Odin cannot help you. Even if I brought you home once more, I believe you would be, as they say, _stuck like that_.”

“Liar.”

There was a pause. “Generally speaking, yes. But not just at the moment.” Another pause. “I’m sure you won’t believe me, but I have felt out the magic used to make you mortal. There is nothing there to reverse.”

A heartbeat, and another. “You are not Father.”

“And you still underestimate me.”

“No, I have learned well never to do that. I shall never again underestimate your ability to lie nor your propensity for wickedness.” Thor glared at him.

Loki’s brows drew together for a brief moment, and he looked away and did not answer, only giving a shrug as if he had barely noted Thor’s words.

*

They trekked onward across the far emptiness of Jotunheim, and the night around them grew darker and the winds stirred in silence. They had by then left the high ridge, descending a long, slow slope to a vastness of small hills and cracks, with smooth paths like dry, sourceless meanders and scatterings of boulders.

It was a landscape that bred visions; in the swirling snow, shadows moved like half-seen creatures, and the high whistle of ice crystals riding upon the winds turned to chorus of voice and clang of armor, seeming to circle as one turned. Even the stretch of land before one’s feet was a mere blur. Thus it was that they had almost stumbled across its boundary before they realized that the ground in front of them was marked with a broad circle of broken snow. In its middle there was a low, jagged outline, something piled there and half-covered again.

Loki approached, cautious. In that land, it might have been nothing but debris, left there for millennia and disturbed only by the vicissitudes of wind and weather. But some niggling sense of recognition irked at Loki as he came closer, making him wary, making his brows draw together.

Then he saw.

Dead limbs stretched into unsettling angles and frozen there. The cold blue claw of a hand. The bodies headless, dried blood dark upon their chests.

Thor approached as well as Loki stared without moving.

Two Jotun bodies dumped in a heap as if they’d fallen from the sky.

For a minute Loki stood there aghast, comprehension coalescing like ice floes in his mind. He put the pieces together, and the edges of his mouth twitched. Loki might have wept. Instead his throat began to tickle and his breaths began to choke.

He had not been able to understand it before. It had mystified him. It had been the crucial failure that he could make no sense of. But _this_ was why Jotunheim had not arisen for war. _This_ was why he had not found the Frost Giants churning for revenge. Because… because _they had not known._

Loki hooted with laughter, gasping, until Thor eyed him with alarm. He waved a hand.

“‘Whence they came,’” Loki wheezed, bent over his knees and cackling like a madman until he nearly retched. The bridge’s guardian had not broken a single oath. “Heimdall has a… by Ymir’s blood… very loose interpretation of ‘whence they came.’”

Thor’s gaze, heavy with suspicion, rested upon Loki like a weight until he sobered. When he finally got a hold of himself, he had to brush a frozen rime of tears from his cheeks. Thor still stared.

They left the ice-solid bodies where they were when they started off again.

“Those were my blood kin. Or so Odin told me,” Loki said miles later. The amusement had gone, leaving him feeling empty as a shell, and near as fragile. He smiled. “But I had to take retribution upon them for what they did to our father, of course.”

“But you brought them,” Thor said.

“And you think that means I love them? They chose their own actions. I merely gave them the opportunity. And then I did what I had to do.”

“You are truly mad,” Thor rumbled.

Loki laughed, a sound lower than the distant, speckled crackling of ice. “I am many things, brother.”

*

On they went, across fields that sparkled in the faintest light, between dark obelisks at the feet of which they were as ants, across expanses of land bordered with endless mountains, the distant jagged edge of the world. The air smelled of ancient snows, of the frozen bones of forgotten creatures. The winds had gone eerily still, leaving the night terrifying in its silence. Colder and darker. The clouds seemed higher; the sky curved overhead with an onyx sheen.

Then at last Thor could walk no more without a true rest, and in a somewhat sheltered spot, a place where two large boulders formed into an angle, they stopped.

For a while, Thor did not speak to him, only crouching with his chin low, positioned just so he could see Loki in the corner of his eye.

Loki watched; Thor had never had any skill at all at concealing his thoughts, his every intention and emotion plain on his face. And it was clear enough now that he was beyond troubled, wrath warring with the pangs of deep hollowness that seemed to breed in this place.

Loki curled over his knees, anxiety constricting his chest in a tight band when he breathed. With each heartbeat and each compulsive glance it occurred to him that if he wanted to, he could still pry sharp fingernails into the thin spots he’d worn in Thor’s armor. Thor made to ignore him now, but Loki could dig at tender wounds until he sparked and seethed and… surely if Loki wanted to, he could…

“Do you think Fandral perished?” Thor asked, low and heavy, slouching back against a boulder, frowning up at the black of the sky.

Loki blinked, startled out of his reverie. “How should I know? But I imagine he _could_ have been healed, if that makes you feel any better.” He had suddenly recalled the moment of sitting by Thor near an overturned banquet table, tension hanging in the air over their heads as he waited, readying just the right words. He remembered as if he were there again.

He heard Thor’s tiny sigh, and he looked away. Anything—everything Loki could do seemed suddenly purposeless. And Loki felt suddenly weary.

A short time later, Thor began to shake with violent shivers, his shoulders hunched and his arms clenched tight around himself, fingers jammed under his armpits and teeth chattering.

Loki let him suffer for a while, until it became clear that he would not complain on his own. Loki sighed then and climbed over to sit next to him. With only the most perfunctory twitches of resistance, Thor allowed himself to be pulled close as Loki wrapped them both in his cape.

Merely because of the cold, certainly. He did it only because of the cold.

Thor sank against Loki’s shoulder. After a little while, his eyelids slid shut.

Loki sat for hours unmoving, staring out at the darkness over the top of his brother’s blond head. There was a feeling in the center of his chest like the slow slip of a blade. It made his breath catch, the weight of Thor against him, his warmth, his tender mortal form. Loki buried his nose in Thor’s hair and closed his eyes and breathed.

It was almost unbelievable to think how near he had come to letting this end.

*

Thor woke first, coming to with a tiny jolt and instantly stilling again.

He moved away carefully, slipping out of Loki’s embrace to get to his feet without a sound. The night around him was just as dark and cold, but Loki had not stirred, dozing where he sat among the ice and snow, head nodded forward on his chest. In his sleep, his eyes closed and his pale face smoothed of tension, Loki looked practically innocent, practically vulnerable, practically like the brother Thor had always believed him to be. The one who loved him. He ached at the sight.

Thor decided before he could hesitate. He knew what he had to do, and he knew he would never have a better chance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another cliffhanger, sorry! /o\


	10. Chapter 10

It began subtly. It began as the arrival in the air of a scent like the coldest northern seas and as a streak of dim, venomous purple across the carven edge of the sky. It began as the sudden stirring of the wind from all directions. It began as the start of new snowfall, not soft flakes but frozen crystals as hard and sharp as sand, prickling like tiny daggers against the exposed skin of the once-lord of storms.

He lifted his arm across his face to shield himself as he leaned against the rising wind. Alone, Thor pushed through the plain of snow that had already grown nearly knee-deep, hair whipping against his face, and he had long since begun to worry.

What worried him was not the sense of treachery that had settled like a stone in his stomach the moment he decided on his course. He no longer cared about that.

What worried him was not even precisely the risk he took, for he had been thinking on that since the moment they had come across the mark of the Bifrost in which the two dead Jotnar lay: he knew that if Heimdall had sent them here, then he could see this place. If Heimdall could locate him, it would surely be but moments before he was returned to Asgard. But that had not happened yet, and the only explanation was that Loki was hiding them from Heimdall’s gaze—as must have been true for some time.

The spell clearly did not require Loki’s attention, or else it would have lapsed when he slept. But, if what little Thor knew of magic could be trusted, the spell must be centered on the one who cast it, lingering on Thor for only a little while otherwise. If Thor ventured far enough away from Loki and stayed away long enough, eventually it would fail. If he could get near to the site where Bifrost had landed, it was practically certain he would be seen. So, he concluded, all he needed was to escape at a moment that would allow him a few hours’ head start.

He had not counted on the moment of his escape occurring as an ice storm swept down upon the most desolate part of Jotunheim. He could feel in his bones the peril of this storm. But he could not turn back now. Could not give up without even making the attempt.

The temperature dropped, and the winds rose, and the snow grew ever deeper, ever thicker upon the ground.

He had already seen that this place bred illusions. In the storm, the nightmare visions multiplied. The dark, distant forms of ice spires and sculpted drifts seemed to twist and reshape themselves as he watched, and the mists of blowing snow specked with points of the faintest light crafted illusions of masses of creatures circling, threatening, just out of view. The wind’s cries turned to a burble of senseless voices in a wordless song. The tramp of an army passing in the dark. Footsteps of metallic beasts, grinding and shrieking in slow, cyclic rhythms. There was a rush and whisper as of crowds of the dead in Hela’s realm, their dry tongues rustling in their mouths full of forgotten secrets.

Thor yelled against the howl of winds, proving his own existence, though such a small and powerless thing he was wandering upon the frozen surface.

Behind him, his trail of footsteps was effaced nearly as soon as he passed, and Thor fought against ever-deeper drifts that piled before him, forcing his way through with brute force—this should have been so easy. If he wished, he should have been able to find some boulder and heave it along his route to beat down the snow, or he could have simply _flown_ , hanging from the end of Mjolnir’s handle… he would have liked to see if he could control a storm of Jotunheim. If he was ever restored, he would come back and attempt it as a measure of reprisal for this hardship, though not before he spent quite a long time stretched under the warm sun of Asgard baking the cold from his memory. He would laze in the day-heat and be just as satisfied as Loki always seemed to feel in his trickery, and none would blame him for his broken word under the circumstances. And when he came back to Jotunheim he would find Loki, drag him into the light, confront him, and he would prove that the mighty Thor would not be made to bow any longer. It would not be cruel, because he was not Loki, he was _better_ than that, but he would make Loki regret all he had done. He would… he would…

With a soft rushing sound, the slope on which he stood crumbled and gave way, wiping out all thought but his spinning panic and sending him sliding, tumbling, rolling, thumping to a stop at the bottom of a small hill, half buried under the snow.

A weak groan escaped his lips. He stared up at the black sky, snow pricking against his eyelids and sneaking down his neck. Dizzy and bruised and near despair. It was a moment before he could make himself move to dig himself out and get to his feet and begin again.

Disoriented and no longer entirely sure that he was still headed in the right direction, he struggled through a mound of snow that seemed not to want him to pass.

Heimdall would have to see him soon.

Even in whatever chaos remained in the wake of their departure from Asgard, the guardian of Bifrost would not have abandoned his post. He would be looking. Thor was certain of that. He envisioned the brilliant beauty of the stream of the bridge’s light piercing the darkness; he had been waiting for that sight. Yet the night remained black and lightless. The storm drove on, a muted but inexorable force spanning from ground to sky.

He felt so cold.

He huddled around himself, dreaming of warmth as he stumbled on. He realized that he could no longer feel his toes, and his fingers were like white clay, numb and uncoordinated and chill. He held them close to his face, looking at them with dismay, though he wasn’t entirely sure why he found the sight so troubling. He blinked slowly. He felt certain that ice was even forming on his eyelashes, making them heavy, making it difficult to focus.

_Someone_ would have to find him soon…

There was a sound. Out in the dark, something moving. Thor tensed. Something crunched through the snow. Circling. Stalking. Loki had told him they were too far to come across any Jotnar—but Loki often lied, and perhaps he simply didn’t know.

Wolves. Ice trolls. Storm giants. Nameless monsters of a lightless land.

Thor steeled himself, muscles wound tight, ready to spring over the stubborn ridge of snow, ready to give whatever battle he must. Centuries of experience had to count for something, even though he was now weak and weaponless and lost.

He needed only to last a little while.

Heimdall would bring him home soon.

He only needed to last…

*

By the time he was found, he was half frozen, dazed from the cold, the warming magic on the wane as the distance from its source had grown greater.

Thor felt strong hands wending under his arms, hauling him from the snow drift into which he had partly slipped, partly sunk, and he looked up to see a blue Frost Giant face hovering over his.

“Vile Jotun,” Thor slurred, feeling instinctively that he ought to say something intimidating.

“You idiot,” the creature said in a shaky hiss that almost sounded frightened, or would have if it hadn’t seemed so angry. “Why did you… How far did you think you would get? Are you trying to die? Is that it?” It dragged him up close to itself, and Thor squinted, trying to understand why this Jotun had his brother’s voice. Then, slow as a trickle of half-frozen honey seeping through a tiny crack, he remembered.

“Let me go,” he droned, lolling unwillingly against Loki, trying to push away with limbs that didn’t work as they should. “Hate you.”

“Hate me as much as you like,” Loki said, “but next time warn me when you’re going to try something so intensely stupid. Do you realize that if I had not found you for another hour, I would not have found you alive at all?”

For some reason this made Thor laugh.

The delirium lingered even as the Jotun that held him pressed one hand against the center of his chest, right above his heart, and filled him not with cold but with tremendous warmth, warmth like fire, like sunlight, like strength, like a scream. He squirmed against it as it got into the roots of his hair and wiggled down into his toes. He breathed in a great dazed gasp as it seemed to swell inside him, tingling with life. And it was just enough to make him suddenly feel the bite of the air in his lungs, just enough to bring on a stinging pain in his extremities as they thawed. He became aware that his lips were bloodless and his fingers were stiff with cold. He whimpered.

Weakly, he looked around and saw only blowing greyness in the night. The storm continued. “We won’t be able to see a thing, soon,” he murmured, a strange, sluggish fuzziness in his mind making it difficult to order the words, and he couldn’t remember why he had been resisting leaning against his brother, who was now the only point of certainty and warmth left in a frozen and blurred world.

The last thing he remembered before darkness came down fully was the feeling of Loki’s arms tightening around him and the ground seeming to fall away beneath his feet.

*

Thor woke, feeling cold from within. From dreams made up of fragments of glinting ice piercing a black sky, he woke to a touch, a soft hand on his forehead, stroking down along his temples in a slow pattern. A whisper he couldn’t understand, a voice he couldn’t identify, a muffled murmuring. So distant. The feeling of his body shivering uncontrollably despite the heavy warmth that enveloped every part of him, and the answering tremble in the fingers that brushed against the side of his face. A dim light, and a shadow bent over him.

He did not know where he was or what had happened. There was a feeling within him like a lightheaded sickness barely held at bay, a sensation like the prick of countless needles, turning from strange to painful in moments and spreading to cover every inch of his skin, and his ears seemed stuffed with cotton. Or else the only sound he managed to make was a weak moan.

Pain, darkness, cold, and all in a fog of forgetfulness that he could not push through. He fought a surge of terror. It was a losing battle.

The shadow leaned close, breathed warm on his brow. “Sleep more,” the voice said, clearer now though still low. “You’re safe.”

Though he did not know why, Thor was comforted. With a sigh, he calmed and let dreams claim him again.

_He scented the forest, twilight-dark. The air of early winter, full of odors of leaf mould and half-frozen stream and dark earth and low clouds. He tasted lightning, sensed distant thunder. He felt the strange lightness of the bow in his hands, heard the_ whuff _of a bowstring being released beside him. He smelled the hart’s flowing blood and heard his brother’s silver laughter. Loki let him carry the stag home over his shoulders, and Loki only shrugged when their father asked if the younger of them had not shot anything himself on their hunt. Thor dreamed of the taste of venison and the flicker of his brother’s smile over a flagon of mead. In the dream, only in the dream, he knelt before his brother, head bowed low, and Loki kissed the crown of his head and murmured forgiveness._

Thor woke to a scent of smoke and snow and salt and stone. It was almost forest air—he had been dreaming… he had dreamed…

He opened his eyes.

Oddly near, a ceiling of pale and milky blue, wavering firelight glistening wet on the sheen of its surface. Thick furs were piled on top of him, heavy with a scent like ash and beasts. Air cold and thin in his mouth. The silence of solitude in winter.

Unthinking, though his head was light and woozy as if he’d been asleep for a very long time, he struggled to push himself up onto his elbows.

The slight motion screamed through his body in spasms and he fell back, his eyes wide with pain.

His skin burned with crawling fire. His flesh felt like one massive bruise, and his bones ached with stiffness and cold. His nose and cheeks stung as if wind-lashed. It was difficult to breathe.

The tips of his fingers tingled with phantoms of searing agony, and when he raised them to his face he could see a tracery of shadow covering his hands. Ice-burst cells, blood vessels frozen and blackened and spilled. The surrounding flesh swollen and pale.

He swallowed a wave of nausea and hid the sight from himself. He did not dare inspect himself further, if the pain was anything to go by.

Instead, more carefully, trying not to move much, Thor looked around.

He was in a cave. An ice cave, like a bubble hollowed into the frozen ground, narrow tunnels winding away at either side, convoluted as the path of a worm through a fallen apple, dipping and turning and narrowing into shadow. Only a few feet away in a slight depression in the ground there was a fire, its tendrils violet-white, feeding upon a small dark core in the center—though what it might consist of Thor could not guess. The fire’s heat didn’t seep down to melt the ice below; it only flared outward, licking against the creeping chill in his bones.

Though he had no memory of it, Loki must have carried him through the storm, through the yawning gulf of the Jotunheim night, and somehow found them shelter.

He imagined a mountain of stone and ice above him, a crack in its side leading down into darkness, and he imagined Loki’s satisfaction at the discovery.

Thor reached out one wounded hand, stretched his fingers toward the fire, ignoring pain and weakness in favor of the touch of warmth, the hint of comfort, the dark silhouette. He could burn himself whole and it would barely touch the ice that had crept inside him, overtaking everything in its path. He still felt the wind and the snow and the darkness. He felt the depth of the cave, and the hush that made his breaths sound muffled in his own ears.

A sudden tremor of anger arced through him. Loki could have taken them _away_ from here. Instead he had kept them in this icy realm to prevent Thor from ever escaping. In this place where he was reliant on Loki just to survive.

He closed his eyes, clenched his jaw, visions unfurling in his mind of the long, hollow stretching of time, forever being dragged at his brother’s side like a child’s favorite toy, forever a thrall, helpless and furious… but no, it would not be _forever_. He no longer had forever. He imagined himself grey-bearded, grim and weary, and still under his brother’s control. He imagined falling into the sleep of mortal old age as Loki’s cold eyes watched him, implacable as a cat holding a mouse pinned under its paw.

Thor pulled his hand back in a careful motion, tugged at one of the furs that had begun to slip away from his shoulders, curled tighter beneath the soft pile of them. He stared entranced into the flames dancing in their circle, a cold violet blue no matter how much he wished for the cheery red-gold of ordinary fire.

Why had Loki brought them to Jotunheim?

Thor recalled childhood games in which he and Loki slew Frost Giants and left their bodies sprawled in the gardens of Asgard under the heavy white petals of their mother’s flowers. He recalled tales of monsters, brutal and terrible, with hearts of ice. He remembered lessons of war in which spilt Jotun blood marked the faces of warriors when they returned to the king’s hall to brag of their prowess and wash their wounds with ale.

And he recalled the horror that filled him at the sight of the Jotun skin on his brother’s face, red soaking through his eyes like scarlet nightfall. He imagined Loki discovering that truth, staring into his own eyes in the mirror and seeing the enemy before him.

Loki’s reactions had often mystified him. Loki, whose every action had unseen layers of motives that Thor could barely guess at, perverse in ways that Thor had never learned to comprehend. He recalled a cruel joke his brother had once played on Sif, and how Loki laughed about it even when she took her revenge in a fight that left him bruised and spitting blood, lip swollen, vision blurred in one red-streaked eye. He, Thor, had been angry with them both for days for being unable to set aside their differences for his sake. But his anger had only made Loki laugh harder.

Now, centuries later and staring bitterly into a blue-white fire on a frozen realm, he had no better grasp of Loki’s mind.

A noise brought Thor’s head up—fast enough to tip him into dizziness—and there stood his brother as a deeper shadow in the mouth of the lower tunnel. His arms were spread as if for balance, hands pressed against the ice of the walls, his shoulders raised and tensed. Steam swirled from his mouth in the cold air.

“You’re awake,” Loki breathed, surprised. With a smooth motion, he crossed the space between the tunnel and the fire, and there near it he dropped a skin of water, unfrozen. His brows were knitted in a look of concern. “Are you warm? Does the fire burn hot enough?”

Thor didn’t answer. Loki slid close and knelt beside him. Thor gave him only the briefest glance, not wanting to meet his eyes. Loki’s hair was dusted with flecks of snow slowly melting into glinting droplets, and the firelight gave his pale skin a blue cast. Thor turned his face away.

“Thor?” Tentatively, gently, Loki raised a hand to feel his forehead and then withdrew it. “Are you in pain still?” Loki paused. “You must let me heal you more. It was too much all at once...”

The silence between them was heavy. He could hear Loki breathing just a little quickly, as if from some exertion.

“Here, let me…”

Much as he wanted to, Thor did not resist as Loki’s hands encircled his and tendrils of a humming sensation wove through them. He knew the feel of Loki’s magic, though only rarely had it been focused on him in this way. He felt his flesh coming back to life. Felt blood beginning to flow in its normal patterns and the injuries retreating. Felt the magic tugging at his heart, making it beat faster.

“I should have known you would have to try that, foolish though it was,” Loki said, a steady murmur, his eyes on his work. Brows twisting together. “I truly feared I had lost you.” Words cut short like a thread. Lips pressed together, a twitch.

Thor gritted his teeth. It had always been so easy to believe Loki’s lies. Now Loki meant him to forget everything else on the strength of a few healing spells, and as soon as he was fooled once more Loki would use his trust against him. But he _did not_ trust Loki. He would not fall for it again.

Loki’s magic was still flowing through Thor’s hands, healing them, but Loki’s eyes had lifted to study his face, vigilant and tender.

“I’m so sorry, brother,” Loki said.

Thor had never hated anyone more.

*

The ceiling of the cave gleamed pale in the endless light of a fire that never needed rebuilding or tending, burning from a solid core of darkness. The ice beneath it remained unmelted. The tunnels that led away were drenched in shadows that swelled and throbbed at the edge of sight.

Asgard had never existed. Thor had never been a god among gods there, the wielder of Mjolnir, one whose wrath could shatter the ground. He had never been the crown prince of the highest realm on Yggdrasil’s branches, and Loki had not spent the previous months in their father’s palace, sitting upon the throne and tyrannizing Thor, taunting him and twisting him until he barely recognized himself.

All there was—all there had ever been—was this place. Cold and convalescence in an ice cave deep under a mountain, and the sense of a snowstorm roaring outside, swirling around this single hidden space of resonant silence. There was sleep like the stillness of burrowed beasts in winter, thick with dreams, and there was uncomfortable waking, the air seeming weak in Thor’s lungs. There was lingering pain, and there was a fog in his mind that dulled the edges of his thoughts and made him move slowly, when he moved at all.

Loki sat beside him as the cold hours spun away, sitting close, knees drawn up, hair falling in his face like a shadow as he watched Thor with a worried look.

At first, Loki spoke to him in a hesitant flow of questions that went unanswered, or idle words meant to distract, until Thor snapped at him to be silent.

“I wish to hear nothing more from you,” he grumbled, his throat tight.

To his surprise, Loki lapsed into quiet.

Loki still reached out to him with questing fingertips, though, offering healing and comfort for his flesh. And Thor could not refuse, though the feeling was bitter, and though Loki’s eyes were deep and liquid in the firelight, full of feelings he could no longer recognize.

*

Loki kept his silence for days. There was nothing to say. Nothing that would make any difference in the end.

He watched over Thor, tended to his needs and healed him bit by bit, as fast as he dared. He enclosed Thor’s frostbitten hands in his as gently as he could. He lingered longer than was strictly needed, until the sharp clutch of panic faded. Loki had been caught up in that terror from the moment he found Thor’s unmoving body, his shape half-buried in the white of a snowdrift, and touched his icy, frozen skin. His fright had grown worse as Thor sank deeper into unconsciousness across a blur of hours. Loki had expended magic until he was so weary he swayed where he sat, but he would not let himself stop until Thor’s eyes opened, dazed but alive. He had wanted to kiss him. Instead he only brushed a lock of hair back from Thor’s brow and murmured comforting words.

So slowly, Thor healed. His strength, such as it was, began to return. But he was now a specter, thin and pallid grey as a mist. Stolen from the sun, the gold of his hair washed out to the color of winter straw. Trapped in the heart of the ice, his mouth drew down in a grim line and a brittle anger covered him, flecking and crackling as he moved. When he grew well enough to sit before the magical fire, furs pulled around him like a cloak, he stared into flames that seemed to turn his eyes the black of the ocean at night, and he avoided Loki’s gaze.

Thor healed. Neither spoke.

Soon, Thor was nearly well again, and Loki waited, knowing what must happen. He knew, and he had known for longer than he could admit, and this latest misadventure only proved that he had waited too long already out of his own greed to drain this to the last dregs, to savor every drop on his tongue.

He had gotten all he had ever wanted. Of course it had been brief. Of course it had all come to ruin. That was his nature.

And now that he had shattered the glass for the pleasure of feeling of it break between his fingers and the beauty of the cut edges glittering in his cupped hands, he would close his fist around the shards.

Loki was fidgeting, staring at the entrance to the cave, when Thor at last broke the silence, looking at his brother as if there was something he sought to untangle. As if there was something in his thoughts that he could not name.

“Show me again,” Thor said.

Loki stiffened, looking up sharply. “What?”

“Show me what you are, _brother_. I want to see it.” There was a look there of challenge on Thor’s face, like when they were young and they dared each other to do amusing, foolish, brave things before good sense could stop them.

Loki did as Thor asked swiftly, without drawing another breath; he felt the Jotun skin sweep over him in an instant, the peculiar warmth rising up with it, as he stared off down one of the tunnels, trying to appear untroubled.

With some difficulty Thor shuffled to his feet, keeping the furs wrapped around himself as he hunched under the low ceiling and came to where Loki sat.

Loki was unable to make himself look fully at his brother, but he watched Thor's expression shift out of the corner of his eye, and he twitched on reflex when Thor’s hand rose to his shoulder. Thor touched him, fearless, considering, making sense of the senseless. Trying to understand how his brother was not what he had ever believed, and what that had to do with everything that had happened.

Thor’s voice rumbled between them. “Is this why we’re here?” Slow and curious, his fingers pushed back the hem of Loki’s tunic and traveled along the strange Jotun ridges, the darkened lines and whorls that Loki refused to learn.

“What do you mean?”

“You hate this place as much as I do. You would have destroyed this entire realm. The only reason for you to bring us here… to _keep_ us here… is because of this. _Because_ you hate this place.”

Thor’s hand halted in the center of Loki’s chest, bruise-webbed pallor hovering over alien blue.

“When you began this, when you sent the Destroyer to Midgard, is this how you meant it to end? In an ice cave on Jotunheim, hating each other forever?”

Loki did not answer, but he frowned, worried. Thor could not believe that. Of course Thor believed that.

“Why did you let the Frost Giants into our realm the day I was to become king? Why, Loki?” Thor demanded, harsh and rasping in the deep hush. “What did you _want_?” His fist thumped against Loki’s flesh, punctuating the words.

Loki did not flinch.

He felt Thor watching him, waiting for his answer, and he knew what Thor saw. The blood-red. The strangeness of it, his face and yet not. “The same thing I have always wanted,” he said.

After a moment of standing there with Thor staring at him in silence, though, Loki began to squirm in discomfort. He lifted Thor’s hand away from his heart’s frantic beating beneath his ribs.

“Have you seen enough?” he asked, impatient.

When Thor nodded he released a breath and let Aesir skin cover him again, concealing his nature.

Thor didn’t back away, though; he stayed close enough for Loki to feel the warmth of him, looking as if he were considering everything.

“I didn’t deserve this,” Thor said, watching him, chin raised, jaw set. “You made me think I did, but I didn’t. I wasn’t the one who hurt you. Not truly. Others were cruel to you… and I should have seen. Others compared us, and I should not have allowed it. I should have been less pleased with myself. Had you but asked, I would have done much to make up for my guilt in these things… yet it was others who truly wronged you, and when you had the chance to do so, you did not take vengeance on them. You punished _me_.”

Loki tensed. His nails dug into his palms. He looked away.

Thor dragged himself closer, shifting on his knees, head tilted. “Why is that?” When Loki did not answer—could not, over the ache, the stinging tightness in his throat—Thor lifted a hand to touch his face, suddenly pleading. “Why have you done all this to me? Are we _even_ now? Is that it? Have you hurt me enough for that yet?”

Before Loki could answer, Thor’s mouth was on his.

Uncomprehending and overwhelmed but wholly unable to refuse such a gift, Loki dragged at Thor’s breath until he went lightheaded. Thor’s lips tasted sharp and metallic, his tongue was hot and uncertain as it slipped against Loki’s. Thor’s hands clutched and scrabbled at his arms, as if he could actually force a truth from him, and the furs fell away from his shoulders.

Breathless, when the kiss broke, Loki admitted, “Perhaps we are even.”

Perhaps they were, and that made it all so much worse. He had gotten everything he had wanted.

Loki watched Thor’s eyes fall shut as his head tipped forward, hair pale and ragged at the edges of his face.

“I loved you,” he whispered, agonized, in a voice like an echo.

Loki felt himself smiling a wolf’s false grin. “I know you did,” he said. “But now you’ve changed.” He couldn’t resist the lure of Thor’s skin; he put his lips to the subtle tremble of Thor’s pulse in his throat, sucked at it as Thor’s fingers caught in his hair, yanking hard enough to make needles of pain stab through him.

The sound Thor made as he crushed their bodies together was the most miserable, desperate, maddened sound that Loki had ever heard. And Loki gave in to it like a compulsion, letting Thor push and pull at him, staring at the cool pallor of Thor’s body in the strange firelight, gasping at the twisting of tender mortal limbs against him.

“Will you ever let me go?” Thor asked, his voice rough and broken.

“Never,” Loki said, his lips moving against the soft underside of Thor’s jaw. “There is too much I want from you.”

Thor’s fingernails scored down his back in retaliation, and Loki sighed into the sting. It was everything at once, Thor’s hate, Thor’s need, his own wretched tangle of want and pain. Just one more time. Hips jolted, pressing them together. Teeth clamped down on flesh.

“This?” Thor asked. “How much was because you wanted me like this? So you could have me without guilt? Without struggle? Did you fear I would refuse your perversion?”

Choking with pained laughter, Loki reached to pull the furs over them again to keep Thor warm; Thor snarled, hips hitching against his as Loki held him close, arms wrapped around him and hands stroking over him until their motions together turned sinuous.

Everything he’d ever wanted. Thor was perfectly warm in his arms, angry and whole and beautiful. Ice slipped wet and cold under Loki’s heels, and his eyes stung as Thor grasped tighter to him, shuddering hot and sudden and muttering curses against his skin as he came.

Everything he’d wanted.

*

In the aftermath, they breathed heavily, Thor’s face buried against the crook of Loki’s neck, and Loki curled his fingers softly around Thor’s side. He thought of drawing him up to kiss him again and saying how much he loved him, even if Thor would only take it for the cruelest lie.

He couldn’t. Not now.

When Thor tensed after only moments, Loki let him pull away, shivering, dragging his furs with him, and watched in silence as he wrapped himself up tightly again and sat illuminated by the swaying ice-reflected light. He wore a look of shifting confusion and resentment. He tried not to show it, but Thor had never been able to hide how he felt.

“It occurs to me that you have never told me how it was on Midgard. The mortals you met. How you fared,” Loki said after a moment, speaking lightly, easily, as if this were any ordinary conversation.

Thor snorted. “What would you care for such tales?”

“Why would I not care?”

“Because I cannot imagine how you could use it to wound me now,” Thor replied.

“No?” Loki said with a twitch of humor. “I’m very good at that, though.”

Thor scowled and turned his back on Loki with cold finality.

Loki heaved a breath and rested his head on his hand, staring up at the shimmering patterns on the cave ceiling, feeling his pulse as it slowed. Everything he wanted, he’d gotten. Or nearly so.

Tomorrow they would depart from Jotunheim, and he would have the last thing he desired. And then this would all be over.


	11. Chapter 11

When Loki woke in the dimness, he sat up silently, his eyes going at once to the place where his brother had at last lain down, and the tense line of his body did not relax until he saw that Thor was still in just that place, asleep.

It did not look like a sound or pleasant sleep, though; in his slumber, Thor frowned and flinched.

Loki got to his feet and silently approached to crouch beside him, staring at his face. Tempting it would be to kneel there, clutching at his own arms and hoarding every twitch and sigh while hours slipped away. Loki caught himself, though, and tore himself away, forcing himself to gather up his strewn clothes. Thor did not know it was almost over, and he would not know until it was too late to turn back.

When he was ready he woke Thor with a hand to his shoulder, shaking him.

“You are well enough now,” he said as Thor blinked at him with dour, groggy suspicion. “You should prepare.”

“For what?” Thor asked. Sleep clung to his eyes and turned the question into a grumble.

Loki nodded reassurance at his perplexed look. “Wake first.”

Thor did, and Loki waited as he gulped down water and rubbed at his face and stretched aching muscles.

Then he spoke. “You left something behind on Midgard, Thor. It’s time we go collect it.” And Loki grinned wild, crossed the space between them, pulled Thor up beside him by both hands. “You didn’t think I had forgotten, did you?”

*

“What do you mean, Loki? You can’t…” Thor shook him off, disbelieving.

Thor suddenly remembered when they were young and Loki had watched Thor’s gradual progress at the still-too-heavy hammer with longing in his eyes. He had not thought of that in years; there had been no reason to, for Loki had long since ceased to covet it.

… hadn’t he?

“What do you intend to do?” Thor asked, suspicious.

Loki did not reply. He glanced once fully around the ice cave, thoroughly, and then back at Thor. “Are you ready?”

Before Thor could make any answer, the fire flared up high and bright beside them, casting stark shadows across the cave as Loki stepped closer and grabbed his wrist.

Like a blink, the fire went out. Hissing darkness and a moment of shrieking wind.

And then they were gone.

*

Everything was grey, the swirling grey of thick mists just beginning to be blown away.

He remembered this place from the last time. But before they had been escaping, running _away_ in the greyness, slowing to a wander, to a halt, to a space of breath and questions and shattered truths. Now they flew _toward_ , and Loki’s fingers were tight on his hand.

Flickers of stones worn and pitted as bones under seawater. Walls cracking and crumbling as they passed in a blur.

They were rushing, flying. Loki pulled him onward, and Thor heard his voice as if from far away. “Do you remember how I envied you when you first lifted it?” There was breathless anticipation in Loki’s voice, and he glanced at Thor in brief flashes, the moment frozen around his faint smile and the distant light in his eyes. “We were both so young then, and surely you can hardly blame me for how I felt. For years after, I loved to watch you wield it, even as I envied you. I think I loved it even more than you did.”

Thor did remember. He remembered the hammer becoming so clearly his, the weight turning light in his hand. The deep rumble of thunder that came from _him_. The way lightning crackled around him and outlined the world in savage light. And Loki always near him, the lightning reflected in his eyes.

The mists were sour in Thor’s mouth as Loki suddenly halted, glancing around himself.

“Here, I think,” Loki said with a tight nod. Thor followed Loki’s gaze and saw nothing, nothing but more of the same drab passageway.

“What—” he began, and that was the precise moment when Loki yanked them again through the thin barrier between this grey space and the rest of the realms. Thus Thor was unprepared when they hit the desert air like a wall, thudding into it, slamming against it hard enough that it knocked the breath from his lungs. Heat, so much heat, even in what was now the long indigo evening beneath a round yellow moon. Wavering heat thick with dust and pollen, humid and heavy. Heat after the endless cold of Jotunheim. Loki caught his arm as he stumbled in shock, sinking under the weight of it.

Insects buzzed around Thor’s ears. The desert was purple-brown with shadow; the tang of musty leaves hung in the air. He struggled to breathe. Encircling the sky, desert thunderheads swelled just above the last jagged, incandescent line of day above the mountain horizon. The impending storm pressed inward with a rumble too low to hear.

Thor scanned the landscape, looking for anything he might recognize. Nearby there ran a rutted dirt road like so many he had seen cutting pale across the barren fields of New Mexico, Midgard, when he had first come there, but nothing to tell him where lay their destination. Only dry, dead grass rustling in a gusting wind. Trailing light from a few scattered farmhouses. Land stretching flat and empty to the darkness at the feet of the distant mountains.

“It is not far,” Loki whispered, the cool of his hand squeezing Thor’s again. And then, with quick, sure steps, he started off.

They passed lowing kine beyond wooden fences, worn posts held together with rusted wire. Dusk-colored birds screaming from thorny shrubs. And Loki strolled along peering at the hares that bounded away at their approach and the lizards clinging motionless to the sides of boulders.

Thor had abandoned Mjolnir when it became clear that it was lost to him along with his powers. But in some way, it was still _his_ , as sure as if it were a part of his soul.

If Loki believed he had found a way to steal even that… Thor’s feet dragged against the dusty ground, every step an effort for reasons that had little to do with the fading heat.

And Loki traipsed along without saying a word, insufferably calm and unworried.

“What are you going to do?” Thor demanded, annoyed at Loki’s smug silence. Loki barely gave him a glance. “You have never been able to lift it.”

“I know.”

“You have never been _worthy_.” A bitter snarl.

Loki did not answer, and Thor stared down at the dirt under his feet. A tumult of warm wind kicked up around them. Above them, the clouds closed in, heavy with moisture, sallow with moonlight.

“And it’s still mine,” Thor added, jaw jutting.

Loki’s arm across his body a moment later pulled him up short.

They had come to a spot just under the top of a rise of hills. Below them, lit from within and casting its illumination on a cluster of vehicles, a structure stood out of place. One he recognized, one he had been in before—though it had clearly grown since then, been built up and out.

Yet they did not immediately proceed and when Thor looked over at his brother, Loki was chewing at his lip, staring down at the place where the hammer waited. He caught Thor looking at him.

“Don’t worry, Thor,” he said with a glance. “Everything will be as it should be. I’ve made sure of that.”

Thor did not have time to wonder what he meant before Loki began to whisper to the air, speaking near-silent words to make the two of them invisible before they came within sight of any of the guards. And then Loki was striding away down the side of the hill, leaving him standing there in surprise.

Thor huffed. Loki was so certain that he would follow, as if they were getting into childhood mischief together, even though he could simply choose to turn and walk away. He glared at Loki’s back and paced a few steps back and forth.

But of course Loki knew he wouldn’t. He could not leave without knowing.

Furious, teeth gritted, he scuffed and skittered down the dirt slope, trailing in Loki’s wake.

When he reached the doorway, Loki was waiting patiently beside it, gesturing. Thor squinted at him and at the door, wary. Loki sighed and stepped through it—slipping straight through the metal.

Thor could only follow.

They strode along white hallways in which a few mortals also moved busily to and fro, unaware of his presence or Loki’s. Some of their faces seemed to Thor vaguely familiar, though it seemed a lifetime since he had run through the rain and fought his way inside this place.

Somewhere very near lay a room with a floor of earth, open to the sky, in which he had once reached for Mjolnir’s handle in the simple certainty that all would be well once the hammer was again in his grasp.

He could barely believe that such naïve optimism had once been his, and he glared ahead of him at Loki striding onward with purpose, passing doors that looked in on harsh-lit rooms and winding corridors. He seemed to know exactly where he was going. With his heart in his throat, Thor followed.

Outside, thunder growled from horizon to horizon, from earth to sky.

*

There were a few things Agent Coulson knew about the security at SHIELD facilities, even temporary field facilities like the one housing the hammer: he knew that an intruder might get in by brute force or other methods, but nothing could do so without being detected. He knew that some of the technologies in use wouldn’t reach the commercial security market for fifty years. He knew that camera 42 was always on the fritz and had been from the day they installed it, even though it had been replaced three times. And, finally, he knew that nothing could fool all the sensors at once. At least, he had been assured of that by multiple experts. There were optical sensors, motion detectors that worked on the same principles as radar, motion detectors that used sound waves, motion detectors that used invisible lasers, pressure sensors under the floor tiles, a chemical sniffer, and thermal sensors. With all of them together, he had been assured it was impossible to break into a SHIELD facility without setting off an alarm somewhere.

Coulson used to say he didn’t believe in “impossible.” He was less sure now after keeping track of the mysterious intruder that had been appearing nearly weekly for months, starting shortly after the disappearance of “Donald Blake.” It was approximately human-sized and human-shaped, had a body temperature a bit below normal, and was otherwise completely invisible and undetectable. It showed up on just the thermal sensors now and then, a few feet away from the hammer, and lingered just long enough for everyone in the surveillance station to have a fit before disappearing again.

After the first few times, Coulson formed a theory that whoever—whatever—it was, it was only coming to check that the hammer was still there.

But tonight was different. Tonight had started to go weird when the freak storm popped up out of nowhere. Sudden torrential thunderstorms weren’t unheard of in that part of the country, of course, but there was something about this one that gave him pause. And then _two_ heat-splotches had appeared on the sensor, and Coulson watched the thermal screens intently, trying to make sense of what he was seeing as rain pounded on the roof and thunder rumbled through the floors, as agents and interns hustled around him.

What truly set the night apart was the last thing he learned about SHIELD security: when the immovable hammer you’re studying suddenly goes missing after the arrival of two presences that only exist as reddish shapes in the thermal camera feed, the resultant paperwork will ruin your day.

*

They turned a corner. And at last, there it was. The hammer, the familiar intricacy of its carved surface, the smooth sheen of light upon its head half-buried in the rock in which it rested.

Thor’s hands clenched in longing as they stepped into the room. It called out to him; it was part of him, and he ached for the loss as if it were a limb. In fact it seemed even more essential: so much of what made him _Thor_ was there, out of reach. His powers, his birthright, too long denied to him.

With his heart in his throat he watched as Loki approached it silently, reverently. Loki’s face was blank, his dark eyes glinting. Loki put his hand to the haft and caressed it like a treasure, fingers curling around leather wrappings worn dark by Thor’s grip.

“Do you believe it should still be yours, brother?” Loki asked, looking up and meeting his eyes.

Thor watched, and he felt he couldn’t even breathe. Another moment of this and he would bolt forward and shove Loki away from it, challenge him although he could not hope to win. Shout that it was _his_ , even if he could not—

“What would you do with it?” Thor demanded, his voice strained.

Loki looked at him strangely, still stroking the hammer with slow grace. “Don’t you even want to touch it again?”

He did. He wanted so badly he could taste it. And suddenly he didn’t care what trick Loki had in mind, if it let him simply _hope_ for _one moment_ … Thor moved forward. His hand shot out and gripped just above Loki’s. Something in him thrummed at the touch, at the proximity. But he didn’t dare attempt to pull. He couldn’t bear to fail.

Thor could feel Loki’s eyes on him. “You were right, you know. I have never been worthy of it. Even less so now,” Loki said. His fingers slipped away. “And now it will be yours again, because you _are_. Because you _will_ be.”

As Thor blinked in confusion, Loki took half a step back, and he gave Thor a fond little smile.

“My dear, beloved Thor, have you forgotten just what it is that Mjolnir demands of its bearer?” Loki asked, eyes glittering. “Do you suddenly believe your worth lies in _mercy_ and _kindness_ toward the wicked? In taking pity upon those who would only harm you? Mjolnir wants blood and justice and death. And I have given you _every reason_.”

Loki dropped to his knees then on the dark ground. His mouth was a sharp slash.

“So here is your chance to prove yourself worthy. Take your hammer back, and take your vengeance. I know you have dreamed of this.”

Thor watched the heavy rise and fall of Loki’s chest as he knelt there. He heard the hiss of Loki’s breath.

“Pick it up… and _kill me_.”

For everything Loki had done to him…

Thor felt his own grasp tightening on the handle, the muscles in his shoulders tensing.

Loki was right.

Rage burned in Thor’s veins, blazed white-hot as a star, and with a yell, he began to pull. He pulled with arms straining, heels pushing against the ground with all the force in his sinews, until with a cracking, grinding, wrenching like the foundations of the world twisting apart, the hammer came free in his hand.

At that moment, the sky tore asunder. Power rushed back within him like air to the lungs of a drowning man, like opening his eyes to sunlight after months in darkness. With a bellow of triumph he hefted the hammer aloft. The thunder came in answer to his call. The clouds above opened and rain pounded down.

The winds whirled and the storm rose, and the god of thunder stood in the center of it all, red and silver and black, drenched in the downpour, powerful as no other living thing had ever been.

And before him, Loki had not moved. He knelt in the mud with his hands pale upon his knees, head tilted back as the rain splashed on his face and dripped down around his lids. His mouth—quivering as if he might be about to smile—was dark and wet. And awe was in his eyes, as if the sight before him was the last he ever wished to see.

One swift blow to the temple just where the dark hair feathered into his brow and Loki would fall. That was all it would take, and it would be a just retribution. He would crumple, broken and defeated, and the next time Thor looked into the green of his eyes, the wicked light would be gone out of them and hemorrhages would have flushed the white into florid red.

Thor wanted that.

Lightning crashed all around them, and in that moment Thor lunged, taking Loki’s neck in his grasp, the tendons twisting under his fingers as he wrenched him upward. Loki’s body dangled at the end of his outstretched arm, blasted with the flash of blue-white light and black shadows, strands of hair plastered wet across his face. Thor growled, teeth bared. The hand that wielded Mjolnir wound back, readying for the final strike.

Loki kicked, feet slipping against the muddy ground, but not to escape—merely a wild, reflexive struggle, his hands clutching at Thor’s wrist. He blinked and his breath rasped through his constricted throat, gasping out a whisper above the storm. “Do it. _End_ me. I will... stain your hands forever… as all the memory of me you will need.” He thrashed once more. “ _Do it_.”

Reflections of the lightning darted through the green of his eyes. Then he shuddered and fell still in Thor’s grasp, cool rain dripping from his lowered lashes as he waited for the final blow.

*

Thor released the breath he had been holding. Lowered the hammer until it rested at his side.

His powers had returned. He was himself again, his strength once again his own. He loosened his grasp and Loki slipped to the ground.

Loki nearly stumbled, caught himself with hands on his bent and muddied knees. He coughed and retched briefly. “No,” he gasped, shot through with helpless disbelief. “No…” It sounded like a sob.

“I won’t kill you,” Thor said, steady. “I will not let you force my hand.”

Loki straightened, gaze flickering madly. “You…” he began, breaths coming quick and shallow. He swallowed hard and lunged back at Thor, pushing him, nails scratching against Thor’s skin. “I am your _enemy_ , Thor.” The words were stretched thin in his throat. His fists were balled before him. “I have tortured you, purposefully, and I have enjoyed every moment of it. I have taken everything from you. _Now kill me._ ”

“No,” Thor said again, refusing, and he felt lighter than he had since before Odin had cast him down to Midgard; he could breathe once more.

Loki’s eyes went wide, full of shock and agony. Thor steeled himself then to reach out and seize him. There were debts between them to be paid still, and he meant to have the vengeance _he_ chose, not the one Loki demanded.

But before he could move, Loki flinched away, and then in the next moment he was gone and Thor stood alone in the rain.


	12. Chapter 12

Loki fled as the rain blurred the wide night, grey upon black.

Thor had not killed him. After everything he had done, _Thor had not—_

Cold droplets streamed down Loki’s face, trickled down his neck as he fled into the desert. Flashes of light above the mountains. Smell of ozone and earth, thick as a mouthful of blood. The ground steaming and whispering under his feet, the roar of rain filling his head and blotting out the world.

He was far out in the emptiness when he stopped, collapsing heavily to his knees again, panting as the storm continued to rumble around him, his palms pressed against the flooded ground.

It had started here, in this desert, Thor apologizing with silver reflections smeared sharp across his face, a lock of hair angling down, the shadow a thin bruise on his cheek, and unbearable, aching love in his eyes. Loki had practically been able to hear Thor’s heart pounding as he offered himself, could practically _taste_ it, salt and pride and lightning— _could taste it, just as he could feel fragments of broken ice digging into soft places inside him, cutting him with the truth of what he had always been, this wretched cold, a trick, a lie he’d believed, this monster who could look at his brother and want nothing more than_ —

Loki had wanted so badly to destroy him. He’d licked the bitter swell from his lips and he had imagined he would drench himself in Thor’s ruin.

But in some deep part of himself, he had known even then that it was not Thor who should be destroyed.

Now Loki whimpered, and his fingers dug into the wet grit as he breathed. The lightning had come to Thor’s call again, and Loki had been there to see it, to gaze up at him as he roared, the storm wreathing him in a glow of power. Loki had been there, Thor’s hand tight as steel about his neck, senses full with anticipation, and he had craved what would come. The glut of blood, the pain and the onrushing darkness. He had wanted to die at his brother’s hand. He had deserved it. Yet Thor, boundlessly cruel, had denied him.

He shuddered as again the storm hummed through him, as thunder rolled somewhere in the distance and the rain continued to pound down upon his back, drenching his hair and slicking it against his brow.

Thor hadn’t done it. And now Loki sank lower upon the ground and he could not hear the sound but he could feel himself sobbing, face pressed against his soaked arms.

He was alone in the desert. Everything had failed. Thor had let him live.

*

Alone, Thor trailed away from the SHIELD compound as mortals rushed past him; they did not see him, paid him no mind even as they swerved around him for reasons they would never question. He was restored. He clutched Mjolnir tightly, weighing it in his hand and relearning the feel of it.

He had nearly forgotten what it was to be so powerful.

Once outside, he let out a yell, pounded the hammer against the ground to call down lightning, simply for the feel of it. He felt the crackle of electricity raising the hairs on the backs of his arms. He felt the rumble of thunder in his skin and in his bones.

He wondered if Loki had gone too far away to hear. Loki had gone… perhaps already worlds away, or perhaps only somewhere out in the darkness, gaping up at the towering storm… but beyond Thor’s reach.

A thick, hot numbness swelled in Thor’s throat, though he tried to ignore it.

The storm swirled around him, continuing to send down its rain as he walked some distance out into the desert. He supposed Loki’s concealment spells would fade soon enough, by time or distance. If they did not, he would continue walking.

“Heimdall?” he tried, turning his face skyward.

His first attempt garnered no response, nor the second, nor the third. So when he tried once more the rushing light of the Bifrost around him came as a soft shock as it enveloped him. But it yanked him away before he had a chance to be surprised, and it deposited him swiftly into the golden glow of the observatory.

“Welcome home,” Heimdall said, watching as Thor stepped down from the dais, rainwater dripping from the tips of his hair and his trailing fingers.

Thor gave the guardian a grateful nod but could think of nothing to say, and anyway he was impatient for another sight than the stranded oasis of light in the midst of the darkness and its lone keeper. It was with that thought filling his mind that he stepped out onto the long expanse of the bridge, the city all alight before him, colors unfurling underfoot.

He had been waiting for this for so long. To return home, not helpless and mortal and uncertain but strong. Himself once more.

And there was no reason to keep to the ground, either.

Pivoting on the balls of his feet, he spun Mjolnir in a tight, whistling circle before hurling it and himself into the air, letting it drag him into the sky. Air whipped around him and whistled in his ears as he flew toward Odin’s hall. The spires and towers of Asgard were small and fleeting beneath him—and he found he had missed this as well, more than he had known. He took note of the sensation of flying in a way he had not done for years, and even when he had reached his destination he took one long needless loop above, feeling the fingers of the wind stroking his hair, stretching himself until every muscle sang.

He landed reluctantly and hard, feet pounding down to the ground before the doors of the palace.

He also landed in the middle of a crowd, for those who had seen the red and silver bolt cutting across the sky had come, and the rumor had spread. In the space before the gates, people were gathering, more each moment, countless eyes upon him. Someone called out his name and others took up the cheer. They shouted it in rhythm. Children clambered up to high places to see; grown men and women pushed and clamored for the sight of Thor returned.

But the last time he had seen such a crowd in this place, it was these same folk come in fury to depose his brother, stirred into frenzy.

How had it been after he and Loki had disappeared? He had not thought of it before—it had seemed too distant, like a faded dream—but now he could envision his father, one eye glinting with regal menace as he stood before the people of Asgard and called an end to the madness of rebellion. The Allfather’s word was law; he could imagine the hush that would have fallen. Now, speculations would be spoken only in the most discreet of whispers. Loki’s ill-fated rule had ended here, and Thor could not help but be reminded of it as his own name was called by hundreds in celebration. The sound was no longer pleasing, gone thin and brassy in his ear.

Without a word he turned away from the crowd, shoved the door open, and let it thump shut behind him. Beyond it there was silence and cool calm, and a guard bowing to him in a deep salute.

Thor collected himself. “Odin is well?”

The guard nodded.

“Good. Then run ahead and tell my father that I have come home.” At this, the young man hurried forth, his armor clanking softly.

Thor waited until the man was out of sight before putting his hand against the wall, feeling its smooth solidity against his palm. Asgard. Home. The place he had spent the whole of his life, among towering columns and halls of firelit gold, everything eternal, everything bright. But the last time he had stood here, he had been weaker than an Aesir child, susceptible to all manner of wounds and illnesses, his every breath touched with frailty and the threat of loss. He had never imagined how crucial it was, the form that one wore. As a god he could face death in battle, blood pouring from his wounds. He could flounder in inhospitable lands for years. He could face horrors unknown and unnamed. Yet never would he feel so helpless, so lost, so near to darkness as during a day spent mortal in Asgard, pretending that his old life still belonged to him.

It seemed unfathomable now that he had borne it for as long as he had. Yet he also remembered how the only respite, the only thing that made it tolerable, had been Loki’s presence. It was only in Loki’s company that he had felt he had any place in Asgard at all. He wondered if Loki had known—if he had felt for him at all, wandering Asgard as a stranger within it—or if that had only been Thor’s own folly, Thor’s own sentiment, leaning upon something that was not there.

Whatever it had been, it did not matter any longer. It was in the past, and he never need think of it again. He let his thoughts go quiet as he strode toward the place where he expected to find his father. The doors of the throne room opened before him, and his steps resounded solidly as he came before Odin’s seat.

The guard had done his duty, and Odin gave him the formal welcome of king to an heir too long away on a journey, rising as Thor bowed before him.

“I have returned,” Thor said.

Their private reunion would come after; this moment was on display to the gathered court, and Odin spoke words that Thor heard only as a murmur of rote cadences. He raised his chin and forced a hint of a stiff smile.

The last time he had been in this room taking a knee before his father, it had been with his eyes full of the light of a throne that was nearly his. As he looked up now into his father’s aged face—older, he seemed, than before—he could not help remembering long hours beside Odin’s sickbed dreaming, hopelessly, of being restored. And now he _was_ restored, and he was home.

But he found himself forcing out the words of the formal answer he was expected to give, past a knot that had formed inexplicably in his throat.

*

Soon after, Thor sat in a smaller space, a private council chamber to which he had followed his father after the conclusion of the formalities. They had too much to speak of that did not need to be told to the entire realm, or even the parts of it that attended Odin’s court. And now Odin was watching him with brows drawn together, having pulled back from a brief embrace, his one eye piercing as if he might divine what had transpired; Thor almost wished he could have. It would at least spare him the discomfort of having to put the tale into words.

“I am glad to see you well,” Thor said haltingly as the silence drew on.

Odin gave him a little smile. “I am more than glad to see you returned, my son, even if I do not believe I see you _well_.”

Thor glanced away.

Odin went on. “Though less than glad to see that you have returned without your brother.”

Thor stopped short and stared in disbelief. “My _Jotun_ brother?”

Odin frowned, shaking his head. “He is still your brother. You should both have learned the truth some other way, and I am sorry for that. I meant to spare you both… What happened was not what I intended.”

The frustration that had been growing in Thor’s chest flared and caught like dry kindling: he had been awaiting this reunion for so long, and he had believed that his father’s wisdom would somehow make sense of everything, just as he had been certain that setting foot in Asgard once again would heal him. The reality was a bitter disappointment.

“What _did_ you intend to happen when you cast me out?” he asked, unable to stop himself, fists clenching at his sides as the bitter anger rose higher. “Had you not thought to punish me in such a way, none of this would have occurred.”

Odin’s sharp grey eye met his gaze. “I sought to teach you…” he began. But Thor went on before he could continue.

“Would I have learned it, perishing like a mortal? Would you have ever given me back what you took from me had I not regained it on my own? Did you mean for me to be defenseless? Did you mean to leave me like that for Loki to take his vengeance on?”

The last time they had spoken, they had yelled and cursed at one another, his anger that of a spoiled child and his father’s answering rebuke a sore and unexpected blow. This was wholly different. Thor’s anger was now hard and cold, and he did not need to yell. And instead of an answering affront, the expression on his father’s face was one of open-mouthed shock.

“This happened because you lied to us both, and Loki…” Thor’s teeth clenched painfully, and he spat his next words. “It is your fault that I return alone.”

Deep inside, he knew his anger was not fair; it was not just. His father had been just as much a victim; his father had nearly died because of Loki. What Loki had done was unforgivable and was his crime alone. But in that moment, he was too furious to care.

“Your brother’s actions—”

“Do not speak to me of his actions,” Thor growled, dark as thunder. “Allfather you may be, but you know nothing of his actions.”

Odin looked at his son with deep sorrow, and Thor stalked away before the old man could find his voice. He did not care what his father might say. He did not care what his father might do to repay him for his disrespect. Nothing could be done to him anymore that he would fear.

Yet no punishment followed him, and Asgard seemed silent and still. No one got in his way as he stormed through the palace, scowling around himself at shadows. He would have welcomed a fight, a chance to exert his power and his authority.

No one in Asgard understood what had happened. No one in Asgard knew.

His chambers were just as he had left them, and he tried to ignore it, a sensation like walking through cobwebs as he crossed the empty floor. Silence engulfed him. He folded in the cold darkness, unable to make himself move about to bring life back to this place, to perhaps light a fire and busy himself with tedium. He buried his head in his hands, fingers tangled in his hair.

Loki was somewhere on Midgard, far away from him.

It was only a little while later that a knock came: his friends had gotten word of his arrival and come to see him, and they crowded through his door with smiles and boisterous talk, as if he had not just returned from so long away, from miseries they could not guess at. Sif and Hogun and Volstagg. Even Fandral, still weak from a long recovery, held out an arm to embrace him, grinning and complimenting him on his return to glory.

He wanted to be pleased. He wanted to be glad to see them well.

He listened as they told him of Fandral’s valiant battle against death, escaping only narrowly and lingering in the healing room for some time. He listened as they avoided telling him much of their short, quiet imprisonment and the time spent staring at slabs of stone in the dungeons, heels cooling upon the bare floors. They spoke lightly of inconsequential things, as if he might be cheered by it, as one would do for a friend in an ordinary gloom.

He listened, and grey mist filled him, cold and soft and bitter, and he could not stand their company any longer. With difficulty, he explained that he wished to be alone.

“Why did you do it?” he asked as they got to their feet, reluctantly making ready to depart. “Why did you turn the realm against my brother?”

Sif gaped at him. “We did it for you, Thor.”

Thor knew that was true. He knew their concern and their affection for him. The centuries they had spent as friends.

She continued, beseeching. “We didn’t know what he was doing to you, but we knew that whatever it was, you were _breaking_ because of it. You would not speak to us, you would not confide in us, and we were afraid for you. We could not simply do nothing!”

The others at least had the grace to look uncomfortable as Sif spoke, her eyes wild with fire and doubt. And Thor remembered how he had feared that they would discover what had occurred between him and Loki—feeling just as shamed by being the subject of his brother’s vengeful cruelty as by the nights they spent together.

“Yes, you could have.” They did not understand. He had not asked for their intervention, and they had known nothing of what occurred between him and his brother. They had not known—and perhaps had not cared—that he had acquiesced to Loki’s demands because of love, not force. That some part of him loved Loki even now, even as he hated him. That some part of him would have let Loki rule Asgard forever if only it would have made him happy.

They did not understand that Loki was Thor’s, and only Thor would be permitted to confront him for what he had done—no one else deserved that privilege.

He sent them away then, claiming weariness, and spent the rest of the day staring out upon the familiar view beneath his window. Sometimes a blade of sunlight would strike down through the stormclouds to illuminate some ancient structure, some golden monument, and he squinted against the glare. The tiny movements of the people of Asgard below were as beneath his notice as the scrambling of ants.

When night came, he stumbled away from his own chambers and sought another door.

The shadows were deep. The bedclothes tangled in his fists. He breathed in harsh gasps. The room still smelled of Loki, of them both, together, overlaid with an almost imperceptible scent of dust and ash, as if it had all taken place ages ago, or as if the fires had just gone cold.

Thor slept there that night, slipping in and out of dreams, curling around himself, until the bright light of morning slanted into his open eyes as he gazed at nothing. It crawled over the smooth stone paperweight on his brother’s desk holding down a curl of paper, the words upon it written in Loki’s hand. It picked out the dull gold of the armor hung up in the corner and made the deep green seem like shadows. Its fingers trailed through the dust on the windowsill and along the rows of old spellbooks, each a treasure that Loki had touched and studied and fallen asleep over in the long years of their brotherhood. Thor stared at it all as the day arose.

Everything of Loki’s that remained in Asgard was broken before he stepped through the door again. And no one dared stop him. He was the firstborn, the only true son of Odin, the god of thunder. His anger was a thing to be feared, and if he chose to crush and batter everything his brother had once possessed, he would do so, and none would dare intervene. And if he wept as he did it, no one needed to know.

Asgard was dark with storms that day.

That day as he pressed his hands to his face in his own chambers, a serving maid arrived with an armful of woven cloth, intricately embroidered. In the weavings there was green and gold, red and black, entwined together in strange patterns his eye could not quite follow. He stared at them while the maid departed with a backward glance, her eyes full of fear, her arms empty and hanging limp by her sides.

Minutes later, Frigga came to him, and he could barely look at her.

“Your father says you are angry with him,” she said, her voice soft and forgiving. “I know you are suffering.”

He said nothing as she clasped his hands between hers; he stayed silent as she stroked his hair.

“I will not ask you to speak of it. And I understand why you could not tell me then. But I wish you had.”

He looked away; he could not accept her motherly care with much grace. With her arms around his shoulders, he felt an urge to sob against her breast as if he were still a child. But he was not a child, and the feeling set his teeth on edge.

When she departed, he threw her weavings into the corner to gather dust.

As evening came on, he left his chambers, heading to the sparring grounds, hand so tight around Mjolnir’s handle that the leather bindings left imprints on his palm.

He struck at invisible enemies. He followed rote old routines, swung his weapon against each target without thought.

He had believed he would be happy. Every time he had wished for sunlight and dreamed of home, he had thought he would be happy again. Instead, the place that had been the heart of him for a thousand years crawled with shadows. Ghosts of Loki’s laughter trailed after him. Echoes of Loki, still barely more than a child, sitting upon the near wall and teasing him that he had missed a certain mark—the target before him smashing to a billow of straw. A tangible memory of Loki’s hand upon his arm and the way his own grin had once swelled in answer.

Thor shouted and struck and burned until all thought was whited out. When the blinding rage ebbed, the ground was scorched and the air heavy, still ringing with thunder. And he was alone, all others long since fled, sweat rolling down his sides and heat radiating off his skin.

He was a god again, and it was Loki who had given him that. No one else had.

When Thor slept that night, his dreams were haunted by the sight of Loki on his knees, rainwater pouring down his pale, hungry face, awaiting a retribution that would never come. He woke breathless.

Soon it was whispered everywhere that the Thor who had returned to Asgard was not the same as the one who had left. Restored to his full power, but changed. The sky bruised where he walked. He kept company with no one. His smile, once so certain and bright, was gone.

This was not the Thor they knew.

*

It was days before Loki opened his eyes.

An Asgardian could lie in the desert until the climate changed and a forest grew up around them. They could lie there until the roots of trees encircled their limbs, until the sun was swallowed by darkness like a wolf’s maw, and though they would suffer, they would not die.

For a Jotun… perhaps the heat might kill him, eventually. He wasn’t entirely sure. For a brief while he had planned to stay there long enough to find out, but so far all that happened was that his head had begun to ache. And it had all begun to seem pointless.

When he did open his eyes, windblown grit caked the corners and weighted down his lashes. The edge of his lip twitched.

It had been days since he had moved, and when he did it was with a sigh.

A small lizard was watching him with a beady yellow eye from atop a clump of dirt near his head.

“What do you want?” Loki asked it, snappish. It blinked back at him before darting away, kicking up the tiniest puff of dust with its long whip of a tail as it ran.

Loki sighed once more and slowly sat up. Under the stinging glare of daylight, the world tilted around him only for a moment.

Despite all he had done, he was still alive. Worse, he was bored.

He would have to do better than this.

He sat there, the sun beating down upon him, for a little while longer as he thought.

Then, with utmost care he pushed himself up to his feet and dusted himself off, brushing away the caked, dried mud from the storm. Fingers dragging through his hair, pulling apart the tangles and making himself at least halfway presentable. Straightening up and staring out at the horizon.

First he would need information, of course, and while he was at it he could do with a bath and new clothes, and means to blend in with the mortals. Beyond that, he could make his own resources.

He considered all of this with a strange lightness; since everything was ruined, nothing mattered anymore. He might as well see what trouble he could get into.

He started off, not once looking back at his shadow sprawled behind him.

Eventually he came to a paved road. Upon it vehicles sped past. One of them even contained a driver who thought he appeared to be a nice young man in need of transportation.

“Where are we going?” he inquired after a few minutes tentatively running his hands across the soft grey upholstery and staring out at other passing vehicles, inventing plausible fictions about how he came to be stranded so far outside of town. The driver answered.

“Los Angeles,” he echoed, tasting the name in his mouth. And somehow he thought it sounded like a fine place to begin.

*

He made his first inroads on his new plan in an abandoned part of the city, surrounded by walls covered with painted scrawls and windows dark with grime.

One might have thought he would have grown wary of his own plans after all the disasters born from his last, but it wouldn’t have mattered. All he was after this time was destruction. Chaos. Something to do. He didn’t need _success._

While he waited, he tapped his fingers along a railing in the middle of that wretched space—a casual sorcerous gesture that sent half the building crashing into a pile of ruin. Glass sparkled and came down around him like hail. Bricks thumped and tumbled noisily over each other. It felt good, satisfying in some minor, unimportant way, like stretching out limbs after a long sleep.

And it was in that ruin that the minions found him. He had been waiting for them, and they quite clearly had no idea what he was.

“Whose are you?” he asked idly, meeting their stares. “It doesn’t matter. Give this message to your masters…”

He told them about power and about their dreams, about riches and revenge, and how everything they wanted they could possess. All it would require was a few agreements. A few moments of cooperation. Nothing important. He smiled his most tempting smile, generosity and danger all at once.

When one asked what he got out of it and why they should believe him, he made a little considering sound.

“My reward will merely be knowing what good work I've done,” he said, spreading his hands. “And you can choose to believe when you see the fruits of my labors, but by then it may be too late for an alliance.”

He watched as they looked at one another, gauging in each other’s faces whether they could possibly believe such a thing—and whether they could dare to doubt. He sent them along with a little incentive, and when they fled he felt sure they would be back. They would bring others, those who would serve him. With luck he would piece together something like a little army with which to amuse himself.

Grinning to himself, he sat down amidst the rubble to wait.

*

The Bifrost’s guardian stood before his observatory, sword gleaming in his clasped hands before him when Thor arrived.

Thor had avoided coming here for days. And then he had begun to wind up here without meaning to; the first few times he had wandered out onto the bridge, he had told himself it was only for the solitude. He’d sat down on the edge, legs swinging, the roar of the waters blotting out all thought and the sense of the endless drop below tugging at him as he gazed out.

But now he had gone the rest of the way, and whether he had meant to or not, he stood facing the guardian of the bridge.

No matter how much of it Loki had hidden, Heimdall still surely knew more than Thor would wish, more than enough to look upon him now with scorn, or worse—with pity. Thankfully, he betrayed no such feeling. “What can I do for you?” he asked, impassive.

Thor avoided the guardian’s gaze nonetheless. “Nothing,” he murmured. He spent only a few minutes looking out at the twinkling array of the universe before he turned and went back.

The next day he returned. “What do you see, Heimdall?”

Heimdall’s mouth had twitched at that. “Many things. Ends and beginnings. Light and darkness. Countless lives unfolding as they will. Is there anything particularly that you wish to know of?”

Thor shook his head.

When he came back the day after that, he said, “My brother. Can you see him?”

“No.”

Thor said nothing, looking away, almost wishing he had not asked.

Heimdall went on. “He is nowhere to be seen. It may be that he hides from my view, or he may no longer be within the nine worlds.”

Thor had nodded and murmured his thanks, troubled inside. And he had gone back there after, again and again. Whole days passed like a dim blur pierced with the hour in which he made his way toward the bridge and walked its length with a knot of uncertainty in his stomach, dread and anticipation together. It was not hope. He did not hope to hear Heimdall tell him that Loki had reappeared.

“You have not asked your question,” Heimdall said on the final time, a gleam in his golden eyes, as Thor stalked around the observatory’s edges like a prowling beast, agitated and shadowed.

“What?”

“You have not asked of Loki. But this time, my answer is changed: I have seen him.”

Thor nearly stumbled.

“He allowed me to see him for only a moment. But he is still upon Midgard.”

And Heimdall described a city of sweeping silvered glass reflecting ocean blue. Flames bursting in the streets, and a dark figure at the center of it. Then the vision slipping away, a brief glimpse in the midst of chaos.

“Send me there,” Thor demanded, his whole being tensing in readiness.

He had come home, and his return had made no one happy, him least of all. He had spent these weeks miserable, penned up inside himself, and though he could see his parents’ faces in his mind, could envision his father’s consternation and his mother’s worry when they learned he had gone again, he knew he meant to leave. He _would_ leave again, and maybe he would find the solace he sought in the mortal realm.

Heimdall looked dubious, but Thor pressed on.

“Has Odin told you not to allow me to go as I please?” he said, jaw clenched. “No? Then send me to Midgard. If Loki is wreaking havoc on the mortal realm, it is my duty to stop him. Send me now.”

Heimdall eyed him for only another moment before he turned toward the control device. “Very well. I will inform the Allfather of your mission after you’ve gone. Prepare yourself.”

Thor nodded his gratitude, strapped Mjolnir to his belt, and stepped forward, not bothering to say any further farewells.

Loki had allowed himself to be seen, in a scene of destruction, simply to taunt him from afar. Loki would be waiting. Loki had practically screamed his name.

Thor felt a deep sigh of relief in his chest when the beam of the Bifrost pulled him away at last.

*

Thor almost found himself laughing when the bridge deposited him outside of Puente Antiguo and he found that his arrival was not wholly unexpected.

“We’re good at putting the pieces together,” said the son of Coul, holding out a hand. He was flanked by several other men who seemed nearly his twins in dress and manner; they regarded Thor from behind mirrored sunglasses. Over their shoulders, he could see Jane and Darcy waiting a short distance away, standing near Jane’s van and a cluster of black vehicles with dark-tinted windows. Darcy raised her hand in a little wave. Jane smiled, eyes shining at the sight of him. He nodded at them both.

“Better with Ms. Foster’s help, of course,” Coulson added, withdrawing the hand that Thor hadn’t taken. “So… Donald? Or is it Thor? What brings you back this way?”

Thor did not fail to notice the way the gaze of the other men dropped to where Mjolnir rested at his side; he glared at them before returning his attention to Coulson. “I have returned to offer my might for your cause. The defense of this world.”

“Against what?” Coulson said, shoulders rolling back under stiff black fabric, a show of baffled nonchalance.

Thor raised an eyebrow. “I know of the attacks in your cities.”

“Is there something you’d like to tell us?”

Thor showed his teeth in a smile that didn’t feel like his own. “The one who causes such destruction is my brother. Loki. And he is far more powerful than you are prepared to fight. I am here to stop him.”

As Thor stood with arms folded across his chest, the men before him furrowed their brows and moved away, speaking to the air, hand to ear.

Eventually, Coulson strode over to where Jane and Darcy still waited and held a brief conversation with them. The three together came back.

“Normally, I’d bring you in to one of our facilities right now to start the process. Under the circumstances, unfortunately, that’s going to be difficult. We’re a little busy,” he added with a thin smile. “And it may take a day or two for everything to go through the appropriate channels. Ms. Foster has agreed to serve as your point of contact for the time being, but you’ll have to agree to remain with her until SHIELD can follow up with you.”

Behind Coulson, Darcy nodded encouragement and gave him a thumbs-up when he gave his acquiescence.

Minutes later, the sleek black vehicles were a trailing billow of dust and he stood alone with the two women.

“At least I didn’t have to nearly run you over this time,” Jane said as they all piled into her van, and she laughed and wiped her hands against her jeans before gripping the wheel. As they traveled she often glanced over at him as if he might disappear at any moment, and both she and Darcy filled the time by telling him of all that had occurred in their lives—mainly of how Jane had been allowed to work for SHIELD as she studied the traces left by the Bifrost. Thor listened and yet did not; the words she used were unfamiliar to him, even if he might have otherwise understood far better than she did. His eyes watched the desert unrolling through the window glass and his mind wandered.

When they arrived at their destination, Jane led the way.

“So what about you? What happened?” she asked. “Last time we saw you, you were going home to get everything sorted out.”

“That is true,” he said, weighing his words with care. “I’m sorry I sent no word. There were many things I had to deal with in Asgard, things that left me little time for other business.”

They seemed to accept this answer. Jane said nothing, merely unlocked the door and let them inside and fussed around to make them all comfortable.

It was only a few minutes, though, before she pulled him aside, her fingers hesitant on his arms.

“So this is what you normally look like?” she asked, a nervous smile directed up at him. “We heard you only got the hammer back a few days ago. I’d been worried about you. I know it was… important.”

He nodded but found himself unable to answer, and he was surprised when she reached out to embrace him. She seemed intent on comforting him, although she was so much smaller, so much weaker; it made him remember how it had felt, finding her fascinating while some part of his mind planned for a future in which he never went home.

A lump formed in his throat as he told her that while he truly cared for her, he could not any longer pursue a relationship.

He felt her nod against his chest. “I sort of guessed you might say that,” she said, and after a minute she pulled away, wiping at her eyes, looking at him not with hurt but with sympathy. “We’re still friends, though, right?”

“Yes, of course,” he replied, trying to smile.

And Jane, ever practical, then distracted them both by grilling him for more of the answers he had once promised her, pen scratching across the pages of her notebook as she scribbled down whatever he said.

He wasn’t sure how much time passed before, shaking out her hand, Jane stood up and set her notes aside. “Um, hold that thought,” she said before disappearing into one of the other rooms.

In her absence, Darcy set aside the little electronic device she had been playing with while he and Jane talked and gave him a look. “Okay, spill it.”

He blinked. “I… I don’t understand.”

“I mean, I want to know what really happened with you and your brother. Because you’re totally not okay.”

He gazed back at her, mildly alarmed at her insight. He had grown to trust and care for these mortals in the time he had spent with them, and he would always be grateful for how they had sheltered and befriended him. But it had been only a few short days. He had not expected they would know him well enough to find him so obvious now.

He stared down at the floor. “Loki… betrayed me. I will say no more than that.”

Darcy made a sympathetic sound.

“What matters to me now,” Thor went on, “is that I find him. I would have words with him.”

“Yeah…” Darcy said, picking up her device again and tracing her fingers over its surface. For a moment he thought she would say no more.

But then she turned the screen toward him. “That shouldn’t be too hard.”

Thor stared at the video, and though there was no sound he could hear a hum that might have been his own blood rushing in his veins.

“Where is this?” he demanded.

Darcy shrugged. “It’s not live, it’s—”

“ _Where_?”

“That’s Vegas, but that was last week! Two days ago it was Moscow, and there’ve been a bunch where he wasn’t even there, just bad guys taking orders from him. Who even knows where he is now?”

Thor stared at the screen, the blurry but undeniable image of his brother, the video looping on a bright flash as the camera was destroyed. Heimdall had told him. But that was not the same as seeing it with his own eyes.

Darcy nudged him on the shoulder. “Coulson might know something more when he comes back to talk to you. And hey, there’s only been a couple days between each time he’s popped up, so if you watch the news long enough, you can probably find him that way.”

“Are there any more?” Thor asked, looking at Darcy wide-eyed, and he waited as she scrolled through a list of videos. While she was choosing one, Jane returned. She slowed as she approached and realized what Darcy was doing, stood behind the couch, watching the new video clip over their shoulders.

“Darcy and I have been in the loop, sort of, since we were the only ones who knew who he was when he first showed up. And we didn’t know _anything_ —just that he’s from Asgard, so some idea about just how far beyond us his technology would be,” Jane said.

The video played. Jane bit her lip. “You know SHIELD’s not going to be very nice about it if they do catch him. A lot of people have died already.” Her hand came to rest on Thor’s arm, fingers squeezing gently. “We knew something really bad must’ve happened when he was here and you didn’t come.”

Thor did not reply. He found he couldn’t quite meet her gaze; he turned his eyes again to the shaky image of Loki stalking through a thick waft of smoke and fluttering debris, shadows of mortals fleeing before him. There was something about the way he moved that made Thor’s stomach lurch.

At four in the morning he was still sitting in the quiet room, huddled over the cold light of Darcy’s laptop, when news of the latest attack came.

Fifteen minutes later, waiting only to be shown the location of the place called New York City on a map, Thor departed from that desert, launching himself into the indigo-edged dark of the early morning sky, the faint fire of Mjolnir leading the way.

Jane swore to herself and got on the phone before air traffic control across nine states could freak right the hell out.


	13. Chapter 13

Out of the blue, Steve Rogers found himself daydreaming wistfully of ice. Usually the memory gave him the heebie-jeebies, and if he could pick anywhere in his past that he’d rather be, well, he’d rather still be getting knocked down in alleyways than that. Except there was this to say for being frozen: it’d been peaceful, and over the last two weeks, Steve had pretty much forgotten what “peaceful” meant. Every time Loki’s army turned up—they only knew his name because of the physicist woman, and Steve couldn’t remember _her_ name—it meant fragments of brick and glass raining down on city streets, people running and screaming and bleeding, and everyone who wasn’t a bad guy or a civilian trying to hold it together, but always too little, too late.

And it sure didn’t let up in between attacks: there were constant reports coming in from blow-ups in other places, reports that Loki himself had been spotted, video clips trawled off YouTube and verified as authentic, and those inevitably culminated in late-night intelligence sessions where Steve listened—usually he couldn’t even begin to follow the details, but he did listen—to arguments about just what Loki’s true aim was and how in the hell he had managed to gather all these different powers, who usually sniped at each other even when they weren’t actively hostile, and get them marching under one banner. And the early-morning tactical sessions that came with their own set of problems, because nobody could pretend they weren’t in completely over their heads as they prepared to duke it out with the crazy super-powered bad guy and his marauding army of thugs and villains. Fury doled out orders to Steve, and Steve was by God doing his best to make it work because that was the only thing to do. But this wasn’t a war. It was just chaos, sirens and bloodstains and civilians leaning out eighth-story windows with their cell phone cameras trying to get a better view. Steve tried to keep his people following a plan, but against an enemy like this… he wasn’t even sure that there was any strategy to counter.

Ice. Pale-blue and still and silent. As comfortably, horrifyingly peaceful as the grave. Faint memories moved like glaciers through Steve’s subconscious as the whole team raced to the last reported location, Iron Man flying above. Not far away, maybe three or four blocks to the south, he could hear the rippling, crackling echo of a volley of gunfire, followed by another, keeping up until it was just a constant hum, like the ocean. The sound was mingled with low, booming reverberations and high-pitched screeching, all strangely muffled. And all around him, the street was strewn with debris and broken glass. It looked like… it looked like a war zone in the middle of Manhattan. Steve shuddered. At least the civilians seemed to have been cleared out already this time.

“The main force has moved off into the financial district,” said Tony’s voice in Steve’s earpiece. “It looks like he’s even recruited some of the guys from that weird little HYDRA remnant that operates out of Las Vegas, if I’m seeing this right. National Guard’s already on it, though. What about you guys, you seeing anything?”

Steve glanced along the length of the street. Nothing was moving except the flutters of paper blown on the sudden gust of icy wind. He shivered involuntarily and looked over at Widow and Hawkeye to gauge their reactions.

An icy wind… in August.

“I don’t know, Stark. There’s something weird going on here.”

A little bit farther along, among piles of concrete rubble there shone the silvery white of something frozen, something made up all of unsettling angles. Left, right, sprawled in the gutter, across the hood of a crumpled car—more ice, more shapes. Cold, wet whiteness glazing a dented lamppost, a blinding glint in the sun. And a darker shape seeming equally still, leaning in the shade of a tall building. Steve stopped in his tracks, hand held out in a low signal.

He could feel Widow stepping into the shadows, Hawkeye moving off to get a good angle to cover them.

“Got him,” Steve muttered, just loud enough for the mike to pick up, and he knew Iron Man would be circling around, swooping in close just when they needed the team’s big guns.

Steve took silent, cautious steps forward and he couldn’t help but stare, thinking of the video of the very first attack on Los Angeles and how no one could quite believe what they were seeing. This was the first time Steve had ever seen Loki in the flesh, the first time the villain had actually shown up in New York—he’d let his minions lead the handful of attacks that had taken place there.

Loki didn’t seem to have noticed him yet. He was standing there against the wall, his whole body swaying slightly, head tilted and tipped back, eyes closed. It looked as if he were listening for something, attuned to some strange signal undetectable by anyone else around him.

Then Steve noticed his hand, the palm pressed flat to the side of the building. In the pale blue of Loki’s fingertips, the beds of his nails were dark, almost black, and Steve’s mind hung on that detail even much later. Frost crawled away from his fingers in intricate, glittering fractal patterns, spreading inch by inch like a pale stain down the wall and across the concrete of the sidewalk in an ever-widening circle. A sound of crackling and tapping and groaning like the whole city might fall to pieces after he was done. Steve had seen plenty of unbelievable things since his life got strange, but rarely did they send a chill down his spine.

“What are you doing?” he asked in a stunned exhalation as the cold continued to pour off Loki’s skin like water.

Loki’s head turned, maybe seeing him for the first time but not at all surprised about it, and he grinned. “Things like me aimed to conquer your world once before, and as you can see we’d hardly make hospitable neighbors. I’ve evened the odds for you—I am just one man, after all—but you probably ought to be trying to fight me rather than asking inane questions.”

Faint light skittered across the back of his hand and up his wrist as he spoke, fading away only when it touched the ice below. And if Steve hadn’t already been pretty sure that Loki wasn’t doing all this for any of the reasons they talked about in the intel sessions, that answer would have been all he needed.

“Things like you?”

Loki gave him another glance, derisive and considering, before apparently dismissing him. “Move along, little mortal. If you won’t give me a fight, go summon one of your friends who will.”

Steve shook his head. “I didn’t say I wouldn’t fight you. Just wanted to give you a chance to do the right thing. If you surrender now…”

Loki laughed, eyes glinting with malice. “But why would I do that? I’ve only begun to enjoy this game.”

A burst of soft static and there was half a conversation going on in Steve’s ear. “Good job, Cap. Keep him distracted. Almost there. Just another few seconds and I’ll…” He still wasn’t quite used to pretending he wasn’t hearing it. He blinked and opened his mouth to reply.

There was a whoosh and an arrow thunked out of the air and clattered at Loki’s feet, its explosive tip fizzling and smoking.

On reflex, Steve lifted his shield to cover his head and torso. And as such, it made it difficult to see it when the man with the blue fingertips struck out and hurled him bodily into the air.

*

After that, it all happened fast. Steve was aware of the tap of mangled, flattened bullets spilling on the ground. Flashes burst in his eyes like sparks from an arc welder. Winter air, mist and ozone and bitter black smoke. Someone yelling over the same distant echo of another part of the battle down some other street.

Steve dodged bolts of cold flame, the blast beating against his skin as Stark moved in with repulsors firing. Steve covered the distance in an eyeblink, backing him up.

It didn’t bother him that it wasn’t a fair fight, against someone he’d been told might actually be a god; he’d been the underdog before. And it didn’t bother him that it was a fight against someone who could apparently do magic that wasn’t a trick; he’d seen stranger things, and after waking up in the 21st century he’d gotten pretty hard to faze.

What did bother him was that they were fighting someone who treated battle like a game—not like a necessary evil or even a means to an end.

Loki’s pale, thin fingers peeled away bits of Tony’s armor to a chorus of metallic pings and shrieks, and he laughed when he had Natasha’s ankle trapped in his grasp, pivoting with her and twisting to send her smacking into the damp ground, muttering under her breath. Carelessly he caught the sleek projectile of Steve’s shield and hurled it back to wedge in the brick of a nearby building, and he grinned as, with a gesture, a flick of dangerous light retraced the path of a luckless arrow to its source. In his ear, Steve could hear a blast followed by cursing.

“This guy should _not_ be this tough,” said a second, panting voice (at one point Loki had taken a repulsor to the face at point-blank range, and it stunned him only long enough for Stark to limp away).

Steve frowned and knew it was true: everything had gone shadowy, and even with the four of them together, they were losing.

But then he realized that the sudden darkness wasn’t his imagination. The sky above was black with thick, dark clouds, the sort of clouds that had you hiding under your bed as a kid, sure the world was ending. Thunder rolled and rumbled beneath Steve’s feet.

In the center of the darkest part of the cloud just above them, there glinted a point of silver outlined in red.

Steve saw Loki’s face then. He had stopped fighting, and he stared upward, that disturbing smile trembling with energy, wavering only briefly. The rest of them might as well have completely disappeared.

Obviously, this was what Loki had been waiting for.

*

Loki had worried, for a little while, that Thor wouldn’t come.

There had been moments as he set this new plan in motion when dread assailed him and he had been able to think of nothing else. He had envisioned Thor at home in Asgard, surrounded by his friends, their family, doing everything he could to drive the memory of Loki from his mind. He had thought of Thor settling back into his life as if Loki had never existed, and his heart had fluttered in his chest. He had never been able to stand it when Thor ignored him, and he liked it no better now. Part of him had thrown himself into this destruction, wholly certain that it would bring Thor back. Part of him had just been miserable, biting at his fingertips and wanting to claw at something, anything, to rend apart the awful tension.

He hadn’t truly relaxed until this moment, and he stared upward, face turned to gaze into the sudden darkness of the oncoming storm.

The ground cracked under Thor’s feet as he landed, slamming into the ground, lightning sparking off Mjolnir’s surface. There was a defensive tightness in his shoulders, and his breath came in huffs through his nose.

“Loki,” Thor rumbled like a threat.

Loki laughed for joy. “Yes, brother?” he said.

This time the rumble came from the sky above, and Thor struck forward, reaching for him with a growl. Loki evaded easily, lifting his hands in a gesture of calm.

“Was there something you wanted? I’m afraid I’m rather busy at the moment,” he said, taking another step backwards and at an angle.

“I am well aware,” Thor said, following his paces. “I have heard enough of what you are doing to keep yourself busy on this realm.”

Loki flicked a grin at him. “Have you? Then you know how little they can do to stop me. Is that what you’re here for?”

They circled around each other, and somewhere nearby there was the sound of an explosion, the glitter of breaking glass. Loki’s head turned unconsciously toward the noise, and Thor took advantage of the lapse to lunge forward again.

“I am here to bring you back to Asgard, to face justice.”

This time Loki had to strike him to pull away. “Except you have no real intention of doing that,” he murmured, and Thor glared. “I gave you a chance to stop me. You should have taken it.”

Thor snarled his refusal even as he hurled himself across the space between them, Mjolnir in his hand. Loki tried to duck Thor’s reach; when he failed, he grappled against him for a few moments and wound up gouging his elbow into Thor’s gut to roll away and to his feet. The trickster was breathing hard, but he could feel himself smiling.

“Now I think I’m enjoying this far too much. You should at least have warned the mortals of the mess you were leaving for them.”

Loki struck out, but though Thor seethed like the heat of a summer storm and lightning flashed in his eyes, he was still holding himself back. And Loki could not abide that. He gave Thor a sly look.

“Or if you merely want to stop me and save all these fragile, precious little lives, you could try offering yourself up to me again. It did work well the first—”

Loki barely felt it when the back of his head cracked against the wall.

When the ringing stopped and the spinning, fragmented blur of the world coalesced once more into sight, he could still hear Thor’s ragged bellow. Inches away, lips were drawn back from teeth, Thor's eyes burning, the blond halo flying. A hand against Loki’s neck, the other pummeling into his belly in a storm of blows. Loki could feel his own blood bubbling out his nose and trickling down the back of his throat.

Choking, he let his body go limp just before he twisted with enough force to free himself, snaking out of Thor’s grip and driving one sharp knuckle into a vulnerable spot on Thor’s side.

Swaying and wiping at his mouth, Loki backed away. The little flutter of fear that had plagued him—he need never have worried. Of course Thor had returned. And now they would have the battle Loki craved.

“I do not wish to harm you, Loki,” Thor said, fists tensed, jaw clenched. “Do not try to—”

Loki laughed and kicked him hard, and Thor retaliated. They fought, Thor’s rage pounding against him like a scalding downpour in each powerful blow, each roar, each rumble of thunder, and the world around them seemed to crumble to ruin in the violence of their battle.

Thor only stopped at the sound of cracking bone and the wet bubbling of breath through punctured lungs.

With a gasp of horror he pushed himself back from Loki’s battered form as he realized how far the fight had gone. He stood over his enemy hair falling stringy and damp into his eyes and the city a grim halo above him. He looked miserable. Conflicted. Beautiful.

Loki sat up, a hand to his head to hold the wooziness at bay. “You’ll really never do it, will you?” he sneered.

A volley of gunfire kicked up flecks of pavement all around them before Thor could answer, mortal soldiers closing in.

Loki decided that was probably enough for one day. He sighed. They’d been having such fun.

“I’ll see you soon,” he murmured into the wind as he disappeared.

*

Loki remained invisible until he had escaped from the immediate vicinity, moving fast along streets in which the shrill of sirens echoed. Unseen, he passed through the official cordon, through a wave of injured mortals enthronged in panic, scraped by shrapnel. Around him they coughed, wiping soot and gritty dust from their faces, and he let himself, unseen, be carried along by the current until it had weakened, like a rushing stream growing broad and lazy. The crowds thinning, the buzz of scurrying mortals dying down. Distant horns and whirring motors.

By then his breath had returned and the pain of his injuries had faded. He stopped with his back to a dull brick wall for just a few moments to finish collecting himself—spitting out the last traces of blood onto the ground, brushing his hair back into some semblance of order with his fingers, straightening his clothes and checking for any obvious marks of battle. A bruise that raked one cheekbone faded at a thought.

Had anyone been looking, they would have seen a rather unremarkable figure appear from the gloom just beside an alleyway. They would have seen him shrug his shoulders, the corner of his mouth tilting up, and then saunter away, hands buried in pockets. Only someone very near would have seen that there was nothing smooth or natural about the motions. He was preoccupied in thinking back on how Thor had looked at him after beating him nearly insensate; satisfaction whispered through him at the memory. He had broken everything, and there was nothing left for him in the world, so why not this? At least he would not be bored. At least, in some way, Thor was his again.

He wandered down the road, uncaring of where he wound up. He only frowned, brows drawing together, when he looked up to see a massive structure directly in his path. Walls of white marble like a monument; steps damp with a light rainfall climbing to a broad entrance lined with columns, faint daylight streaming down to it through the low clouds.

Curious, he allowed himself to drift inside, moving with an agitation that did not reflect on his face, as if some other force had a hold of his strings as he passed through the doors into an echoing space in which the mortals walked softly, looking around themselves in wonder. Scents of stone and metal and ancient leather, bitter chemicals and electric lamps. Paper and bone and dark ink. Still, cool air.

He had wandered into a reliquary, he realized as he peered curiously around.

He continued to drift from room to room until the sense of a subtle pull brought him before a glass case in which there lay a carved black stone. It seemed to pulse with inner light, and Loki could feel that there was magic about it—though not a sort he had any use for or would particularly desire.

He frowned. It was nothing, entirely beneath his notice, and he turned to go.

No one paid him any attention at all as he paused only a few steps away and turned back. No one noticed as he slipped open the lock of the case with a gesture and withdrew the stone, leaving a double in its place as he closed his fist firm around it.

Unnoticed, it evaporated from his hand minutes later as he strode out the museum’s doors.

At the same moment, over a thousand miles away in a place under a burning sun, a dusty shadow stirred as a small artifact crunched softly into the dirt beside it. It blinked its crusted eyes open. Gave a soft hum and a judicious nod.

Then it closed its eyes again, black hair fluttering across its face in the light breeze.

*

Natasha, arms crossed on her chest, stared through the pane of one-way glass at the man within. Over the years she’d seen a lot of people in that chair. She’d been there herself, once, and it wasn’t the most comfortable place to be even if you were used to that sort of thing.

This guy was not doing well. But maybe neither was SHIELD.

She’d been there watching as they brought him in; she had finished patching Clint up by then and she had crept close enough to watch the fight between two… two of some kind of quasi-immortal humanoid aliens (she’d read the report; SHIELD’s words, not hers). She’d seen enough of Loki before that to know he was bad news. She wasn’t entirely surprised to come away with pretty much the same assessment of the one the reports said was probably his brother.

And her opinion hadn’t changed at this point. She’d just spent the last two hours watching him go through a handful of interrogators. With each one, she watched as his air of stubborn, affronted nobility grew grimmer and grimmer for each misguided tack the agents took. He narrowed his eyes and began to answer in kind, and finally lapsed into sullen, stormy silence when the conversation came to an impasse around what kind of assurances he could give that the rest of Asgard thought more like him than like Loki and that Earth wouldn’t wind up with an even bigger problem on its hands down the road.

“If you and your fellow mortals believe that,” Thor growled, “I am uncertain what you expect I could say to dissuade you.”

Natasha had to roll her eyes when the agent interrogating him at that point made the mistake of insinuating that a few little things like blood samples might go a long way: although they were four levels underground in a well-protected complex, Natasha could sense the thunder. The white floodlight above Thor’s head cast black shadows on the floor, and he kept his head low enough that it was hard to read his expression, but she could see the twitch in his massive shoulders and the dried blood still staining his knuckles folded in front of him on the table.

“Yeah, he’s definitely bad news either way,” she muttered to herself.

She wasn’t expecting an answer, but she got one as Steve appeared in the reflection in the glass beside her. “I have heard worse, though.”

She looked over at him and quirked a grin. “True.”

Together they stood there watching for a while, and Natasha began to wonder if Steve was thinking what she was thinking. She knew a lot of people who were bad news, most of whom wouldn’t have responded well to the kinds of threats and attempted bargains that were going on inside that room. People who weren’t _nice_ , but who did have certain skills.

They’d both seen that, too; Loki had been wiping the floor with them before Thor showed up. And then he’d gotten tossed around like a ragdoll, and apparently the only reason they didn’t have Loki in that room now instead (or, more likely, he’d have already made it to one of the cells) was that _he_ had a skill for doing a disappearing act.

“If we’re going to be fighting gods, it might be good to have one on our side,” she said. “What do you think?”

Steve shrugged. “The way it looked to me, they’re going to be fighting each other anyway.”

“Probably.” That was true. It also sounded appropriate to all the myths she’d ever heard, so it didn’t surprise her either.

A little while later, Natasha went to find Fury to convince him too. And a little while after that, the door to the interrogation room opened and the agents inside got the hint, and she was walking in and holding out her hand, because this was something that _she_ had a skill for. She smiled at him, and he gazed up at her suspiciously but with vague recognition.

“I’ve heard you’re here to stop Loki from doing any more harm, which means you’re on the same side as us,” she said. At his look, she added, “Not SHIELD. The—well, there’s a few of us, formed a little team when he turned up. You’re on it, if you want to be.”

The wary look remained. “What will you expect of me in return?”

“Just that you work _with_ us in doing what you were planning to do anyway,” Natasha said. She didn’t bother to say that this was probably the best offer he was going to get.

Only a few moments ticked by before he nodded. “Very well.”

By the end of the night, it had all been worked out satisfactorily, down to the logistical decision that Stark was prepared to loan Thor a level in the Tower for his use between Loki’s attacks, since he didn’t seem keen on anything that SHIELD was offering.

“What have you gotten us into?” Stark said, rolling his eyes heavenward after the Avengers’ very own Norse god disappeared into the rooms they’d directed him to, looking like he carried his own stormcloud with him.

Natasha only shrugged and didn’t bother to remind him that “not playing well with others” was one of his own particular skills so he hardly had room to talk.

*

Three weeks had passed, and as many battles against his brother Thor had fought beside his new mortal allies, each ending much the same, with Loki one way or another slipping away at the last moment with a taunt on his lips, each time leaving Thor to retreat in failure and in growing frustration.

When he’d left Asgard, he had not thought it would be like this. He had thought it would be over and done in one final struggle, and he would bring Loki back to judgment, and somehow that would soothe him as nothing else had. He had not expected that Loki would make it all drag on and on. Most of all he had not expected that between times, he would be surrounded by mortals who looked to him for answers he could not—would not—provide.

He had learned that Loki had organized a substantial number of mortal criminals who now answered to him and that he directed their movements the world over, for reasons none so far could yet explain. There were many attacks where Loki was not seen but SHIELD believed him responsible nonetheless.

Thor, because he had agreed to this alliance, attempted to aid the Avengers as they studied these signs, a map lit on a screen with various bright points upon it. And each time there was a question of Loki’s aims and motives, or any other mystery, all eyes were turned to him.

“I do not know what Loki does, or why,” he would answer each time, gritting his teeth just to speak his brother’s name. “I have not understood his mind for a very long time.”

He loathed each moment of having to think of Loki, having to discuss him with strangers to whom he was nothing more than an enemy—strangers to whom he and his brother were somehow _the same._

“You sure you don’t know anything?” said the archer once, leaning back against the door frame and watching the rest of the group with keen assessment. Clint did not seem to either like or trust him. Thor returned the feeling.

“I know nothing of his purposes,” Thor repeated wearily, because he was certainly not going to say that the likeliest explanation was that Loki was doing all this merely to vex him for his own enjoyment. “Do not ask me again.”

“Yeah.” Clint kept speaking. “No way you’d have any kind of insight that we don’t have, given that he’s your brother and all, or that you might not want to share it.”

Thor rounded on the man in rage and caught himself only just in time. The man looked at him, brow canted, as if he’d failed some sort of test. Thor felt his cheeks heating.

“Summon me if Loki appears,” he ground out before retreating to his own level, leaving the others to continue the discussion without him.

He loathed every such moment, all of this, entirely.

Sometimes he found himself thinking of New Mexico—of his time as a mortal before it had all gone wrong. He thought of Jane and Darcy and Erik, how easily he had found friends in them. How easily he had even found flickers of happiness amid the grief and confusion of being cast out, alone and far from home. How different it was now. He could barely remember contentment—all he knew now was the drudgery of waiting and the miserable, nameless anxieties that plagued him. He often caught himself worrying that his new mortal allies might someday _guess_ at why he would not speak at all of what Loki had done and avoiding them because of it. Though he doubted they much missed his company.

And then there were the battles, in which it seemed Loki would evade him forever. Loki had stopped his mad attempts to goad Thor into fratricide, or at least he had stopped speaking of it. What he chose to do instead, though, was no better, leaving them both bruised and bloodied and yet denying Thor any victory, any resolution.

But then there came a battle in which, it seemed, the trickster’s luck ran out.

*

Loki remained unconscious until he was locked deep underground in the SHIELD complex, in a cell they called their most secure. In fact he was unconscious for at least an hour after that.

The way it became clear that he had awoken was that, two levels up in a room bathed in a dim blue electronic glow, the figure that had been curled on the hard prisoner’s pallet on the various monitors was abruptly, one moment, no longer there.

“He’s still there,” said one of the technicians, tapping on the screen labeled “Thermal” with one finger before anyone could panic. “I heard about that trick from Coulson.”

In the thermal image, the shape was still there, and it began to stir, sitting up with exaggerated slowness. The nature of the image meant that there was no detail to be seen—no expression to the blotch of color that was Loki’s face—but one needed little detail to know how he must look. Slowly, he stretched out his limbs, one after the other as if checking that everything still functioned, and then he got to his feet. He prowled from one side of the room to the other and back. He found the sources of two of the camera feeds—from among the sources that now showed nothing more than an empty room—and without touching them, he made them blink into darkness.

There was a sense of a mischievous grin as he stalked away again.

Back on their battlefield with the scent of ozone and black earth drifting around them, Thor had been shocked to find the body in his grasp gone limp, the eyes rolled back, showing only sticky white. Loki’s form had also seemed alarmingly thin and light as Thor hoisted him off the ground, bony limbs swinging.

He had thought of calling for Heimdall then, but he hadn’t.

Now, narrowing his eyes at the screen as Loki toyed with the mortals’ security systems, Thor suspected that he could escape whenever he chose. Perhaps his unconsciousness had been a ruse as well and this was all merely another of Loki’s games that would end only when he’d had his fun.

Thor scowled.

Just then a shaft of yellow hallway light slanted in, half blotting out the screen from its glare, and it was Natasha who slipped inside, her expression unreadable.

“Fury’s getting impatient,” she said. “You should probably get down there soon, or somebody else will have to.”

Thor glanced back at the array of screens just as another went dark, and the figure in the thermal image paced back a few jerky steps.

This was between them.

Feeling the knot in his stomach twisting, he gave in and went.

*

Within the cell, Loki was growing impatient.

For the last several weeks, he had been trying to follow through on his plans and he had felt himself growing more and more unsatisfied. His plans—when he’d first come up with them, it had all seemed clear. What would please him was to lure Thor back to him and keep him there. The chaos and destruction had done its job precisely, and Thor had come. They fought each other, and Thor’s hatred rolled over him, scalding; he knew he would be the most terrible enemy Thor had ever imagined, as if they were fated to destroy entire realms in the violence of their clashes. It was wonderful.

Somehow, though, he always found himself wanting more than that, and the dissatisfaction proved to be distracting, and distraction had gotten him captured.

He hadn’t quite planned that, but it didn’t worry him.

One wall of the cell was a barrier of thick glass. Beyond it a lock snicked and a door creaked open, letting light pour in, and a large, dark shape was silhouetted in the doorway for a moment. Loki dismissed the invisibility spell and got to his feet hastily.

“Thor,” he said.

Thor didn’t immediately answer; first he crossed the shadows of the adjacent space on the other side of the barrier, stopping with a gap yawning between them despite the way that Loki was not able to keep from stepping forward and putting his fingertips eagerly to the glass where their reflections overlapped.

“What do you want, Loki?”

Loki felt himself smiling. “What do _I_ want? That’s hardly fair. I am the one in the cage, at your mercy. The question is what you want from _me_.”

Thor shook his head. “You allowed yourself to be captured. You will probably escape no matter what I do or say now.” His voice was dark with resignation.

Loki could only press onward. “Come now, brother,” he said. “There must at least be something you wish to say to me.”

Thor stayed back, well away from him despite being safely behind the barrier. But this was the first chance Loki had gotten to study him when they weren’t trying to tear each other to pieces, and he took the opportunity hungrily. Thor, with his arms folded across his chest and his entire form tensed with uneasiness, looked drained, and at the same time seemed like a beast ready to snap even at a friendly hand. He looked like the very possibility of happiness had been burned out of him, leaving behind a shell of lonesome rage.

And now he scowled. “Why would I want to talk to you? After everything you’ve done… I am tired of your games, Loki. I am tired of _you_. I would be done with all of this, yet I continue because you leave me no choice.”

Loki meant to answer with a laugh. He meant to say something to needle him further, something to push even as Thor tried to keep away. But the lights of the cell dimmed suddenly, and everything blurred as he opened his mouth, even his thoughts going numb, and he…

_From a distance it was nothing. A rock, an ancient root, surrounded by a few strange objects of unknown provenance and the soft chirruping of crickets. Until it moved, legs unfolding, arms twitching._

_It coughed._

_“Loki, you monster, you fool,” the figure croaked. “Look what you’ve done.”_

_The claw of its hand twitched, and several of the objects floated into the air, slowly spinning…_

When Loki opened his eyes from the blink he was at the other side of the room, his back to the glass barrier, his heart hammering inexplicably. When he spun he found that Thor had gone.

He stood motionless. He frowned, confused and uncertain.

Then, decisively, he let the video feed from one of the cameras come back on for just a moment, and he gave it a delicate, quiet little wave, fingers wiggling, just before he escaped from SHIELD’s securest cell.


	14. Chapter 14

They met again only a few times after that.

There were battles, but Loki’s bands of criminals and evildoers continued their villainy upon the mortal realm often without his presence. And on the few occasions when Loki did appear, he seemed ever more distracted. It reminded Thor of that strange moment in the cell when Loki had ceased to answer and turned away, ignoring him until Thor grew angry and left, the heavy door slamming behind him.

And though it was surely only part of some new game he did not understand, Thor could not say he minded having to confront his wicked brother less often, or being subjected to fewer of his taunts when he did.

Two months passed in which Loki had ceased to appear at all before anyone suggested that Thor might go home.

“Natasha says he’s, y’know, gone underground,” Stark sniffed one afternoon. “So… if it’s not a transportation issue, which it doesn’t sound like it is from how you’ve shown up the other times, then we could just figure out some way to get word to you if he pops up again. I’m sure you’ve got… god-things to get back to. Or something.”

“There would be no need; Heimdall could watch for such a thing and alert me,” Thor had answered. “But I choose to remain nearby that I might come to the aid of the mortal realm sooner when that occurs—for I know my brother, and it will.”

But Stark shifted on his feet uneasily enough to make Thor hesitate.

“Do you mean to say I am no longer welcome in your abode?” he asked, brows drawing together.

“No, no no.” Stark lifted his hands in rapid denial. “That’s not what I’m saying at all. Just… if you’d rather not be here, I’m sure we can work something out.”

Thor shook his head. He was not yet ready to return. “I will stay. There are surely other battles I might help you to fight, to continue to earn my place.”

Stark looked slightly startled. “Okay. Yeah, we can do that. Sure.”

There were indeed other battles, against Loki’s minions and against other villains who had nothing to do with either of them. He fought beside the mortals, raising his hammer in their defense, and sometimes he even had a sort of grim satisfaction in those fights; it was nothing to the joy he had once felt at hard-won victories, but it was a familiar exertion, and it helped to remind him that he was no longer one of the weak, fragile creatures he fought beside.

Other times it went less well.

“Not cool,” Stark said, landing beside him in the wreckage with a metallic crash. Thor had disagreed with their decision to hold back, to wait until an advantage had appeared against a certain enemy; he had forged ahead alone, preferring to create his own path.

Thor looked over at him, Mjolnir slung up against his shoulder. “The battle is won. I see no cause for you to complain.”

“We had a _plan_. One that didn’t involve,” he waved a metal-clad hand madly at the ruin around them, “this. Maybe we would have gotten something useful out of their compound, do you think?”

Thor huffed an impatient breath. “For such short-lived creatures, I would think you would be glad to move more quickly.”

Tony stared at him. “Right.” There was a pause. “You’ve really got a high opinion of humans, don’t you?”

“I do no more than speak the truth,” Thor answered.

“Yeah, well… maybe we’d do just fine without your truth,” Stark snapped. “Or your help.”

Tony didn’t wait around for his answer but shot off into the sky with a roar and a bright blast of power, and Thor stared after him.

An hour or so later, as he was gathering the few small items of value to him, there came a knock on the door of the level he had been loaned. He half expected Tony attempting to chivvy him along further, or perhaps Natasha come to inform him that SHIELD would deem him unwelcome in this realm unless he had the Avengers to vouch for him.

Instead it was Steve Rogers, who entered upon his halting invitation and took a few careful steps inside, looking all around himself.

“I don’t think I’ve been in here before,” he said. “It looks… um… nice.”

Thor glanced around. There was very little he had bothered to do to make the place more homelike. He had hardly seen the point—and it would have been difficult anyway. It had a cramped feeling to it, despite the size; it lacked such basics as a hearth. The only touches of him had been the reinforced base on which to rest Mjolnir while he slept and the presence of his armor gleaming in the corner. “It looks much the same as it did before I arrived.”

Steve nodded and looked away again. “Yeah. I think maybe part of the problem is that we don’t really know you. We’ve been working together for a couple months now and I have no idea who you are. The way you’ve been acting—I get the impression that it’s not normal for you, but none of us have any basis for comparison. So it’s hard to know what to say.”

Thor waited, uneasy and uncertain, brow furrowed.

“I don’t know why you don’t want to go back to your… realm yet, and you don’t have to tell me. And I get that whatever happened with your brother was a big deal. So we’ve talked about it, and you don’t have to leave. We know how big of a help you can be when we’re all actually working together. We just need to know that we can count on you to do that. We’re on the same side, and we’d like it to stay that way.”

Steve then ventured so far as to reach out and clap a hand to his shoulder. A simple, friendly gesture, and one that felt utterly foreign.

After Steve left him to think it over, Thor felt guilt taking root and slowly unfurling inside him. Steve was right: the way he’d been behaving was _not_ normal for him. He had become aloof and angry, his rare good moods too easily shattered. Bitterness had crept into his every thought. He enjoyed no one’s company—not even his own—and without truly intending to he had pushed away those who would be his allies.

He had changed, and not into something he liked.

Thor spent the night gazing at Mjolnir on her perch, trying to decide what to do.

*

The next morning he sought out Tony Stark first of all.

“I wish to apologize,” he said when the man turned from his work with a barely noticeable flinch. “I have behaved poorly, and worse still that it has been to one who has been so generous to me. I make no excuse for my actions, and I have no way to make amends but to vow to do better, if you will allow me the chance.”

Stark blinked. “Uh. Apology accepted?”

Thor nodded, with a grateful little sigh.

He repeated this, more or less, with each of the others in turn. When it was done, he felt oddly wearied, but better, and the next evening he let himself be invited—quite casually, it seemed—to movie night, taking it for the second chance it was. It was still not easy; what had changed in him was not easy to undo, but he knew he must make the effort.

Slowly, in a multitude of awkward and halting conversations that gave way to easier companionship, his distrust and wariness faded. Slowly, with distraction and time, the itch of misery within him calmed. After a while he caught himself smiling again without having to force himself to remember how. He grew used to fighting alongside the Avengers but following their lead, content to offer what assistance he could when they asked it of him. And when they were not called upon, he spent many an evening playing poker with Clint and Natasha, spent many an afternoon wandering the city with Steve, and sometimes late at night when sleep escaped him he would find Tony in the same straits and they would keep one another company over a few mouthfuls of drink.

Soon enough, his life on Midgard began to seem less bleak, and he felt himself beginning to heal.

But there was something missing.

It was on one of the late-night meetings with Stark, watching the man he would now call his friend bent over a board full of electronic devices and doing something mysterious to it, that he realized what it was.

“Your device,” he asked Stark, gesturing at the light half-hidden beneath the fabric of his shirt. “Your arc reactor. You say one day it will provide energy to all the people of this realm. What then?”

Tony shrugged. “Then? Then, I don’t know, there’s more to go around, of everything. Everyone benefits, win-win.”

Thor gave him a rueful smile, shaking his head. “I mean, once you have conquered that problem, what will your next task be? What would you turn your attention to so as to provide the greatest benefit to all? There is much I do not know of it, but what I call magic is simply your science taken to its greatest extent. I would teach you, if it could be of help. I would like to be able to say I have done good here beyond simply stopping others from doing harm.”

“No prime directive on Asgard, eh? But I guess there wouldn’t be, under the circumstances,” Tony said, which Thor did not understand. But then Tony clapped his hands against his knees and grinned. “Okay, big guy. I think I’ll take you up on that.”

And that was how it happened that Thor was often to be found in Stark’s workshop, because there was one sort of magic that Thor did know well, of course, if only intuitively: the magic of water and weather, of storm and salt sea. Together they spent hours attempting to find words for things he had known so long that they were part of him, and the hard-won explanations he gave were echoed back to him in changed form, in unfamiliar terms like “carbon cycle” and “water management,” the discussions often going back and forth until the sun rose, when Tony would rake a hand across his face and complain of being too old to pull all-nighters.

It was good work and they made good progress.

Whatever came of his time on Midgard, there would at least be that.

*

Loki stayed away.

He had put half a realm between himself and Thor. In fact, he had travelled much of the realm, from end to far-flung end, keeping a careful distance from the city Thor had made his temporary home. When he began, it had made perfect sense to do so. He no longer remembered the course of his own thinking, though; trying to recall much of anything about it was like gazing into the distance through a haze. He was fairly sure he had gone seeking new allies from among various mortal organizations, and he had been in a place he was fairly sure was called Jakarta for…

He tried to remember and found his head aching at the attempt. He pressed a hand to his eyes, prodding at his mind for memories that did not come. He groaned his frustration.

That was part of the problem. He was not sure how long he had been there. He barely remembered how he had spent the last several hours, much less the days before. He could not have said how long he had occupied the dim space of that rented room, or how long it had been since he had eaten, since he had bestirred himself at all.

Well; he opened his eyes and lolled his head, taking in the room around him. Clearly it had not been too long. There was a full candelabrum on the table, each taper lit and only half burned down.

And when he tried to find the answers to what was wrong with his mind… he tried it again now, obstinately, grimacing at the little points of flame to have something to focus on, and he lifted his hand. The flare of magic flashed back into his face, exploding uselessly without giving him any answers.

He got up to pace, trying to rid himself of the pounding in his temples and the thick fog in his head, and wound up nearly knocking over the candelabrum in a foolish, frustrated kick at one of the table’s legs. _Something_ was doing this to him, but he could not discern what. Or perhaps _who_. Every time he had tried to venture back to New York, the lapses came more often and lasted longer.

Loki stayed away, and he no longer believed it was by his own choice. He had not seen Thor for months. Something within him was _keeping_ him away, and he did not know why. When he found who was doing this to him, he would have to kill them.

That thought was the first that had made him smile in longer than he could remember—which in this case was a day at least.

*

The knock came one morning, in the early hours when Thor and Steve were the only ones who had risen, and Thor (being nearer) pulled the door wide, though of course the visitor would almost certainly be for one of the others, as there was no one nearby who—

Jane stood in the doorway looking up at him, sleepy-eyed, a bit harried and tousled but smiling.

“They followed you. Again,” she said, tipping her head toward the larger figures that loomed behind her. “And they’re both really lucky I just happened to make a stop in town to pick up some of my equipment or they’d have been waiting around a long time. By the way, even having a dozen different kinds of clearance does not make it easy to get two Asgardians from New Mexico to New York on United. You owe me.”

Behind her were Fandral and Volstagg, both looking more baffled than they wished to let on, and more than a little apologetic. Yet all three of them allowed themselves to be invited in for a morning feast of waffles and sausage and orange juice.

“You seem well, my friend,” Fandral told him as they got settled.

Thor ducked his head in apology, shamed to remember how bitterly he had spoken to them last. “I am better. I hope you can forgive my words to you before. I was not myself.”

“We know, lad. We know,” said Volstagg, one large hand falling sturdy onto Thor’s shoulder. “Let us not allow such things to keep us from the table, now, in any case!”

Thor smiled and agreed, and over that long breakfast he told them of what he had been doing, of battles and city adventures, the number of films he had watched and the broad variety of Midgardian ales he had tried. They listened, the majority of the Warriors Three—someone had to stay behind to watch over Asgard, they explained, and Hogun had been too late in grumbling his complaint—and then told him of how things were there.

It sounded as though things were largely returned to how they had been for much of Thor’s life. In the eternal realm, it seemed such wounds were quick to heal.

“Everyone wonders when you will return, though,” Fandral added at the end of his tale. “Simply out of curiosity… have you, ah, given the matter any thought?”

Thor bit at his lip. He had departed in heedless haste when he left the second time, not even saying goodbye, and everyone was surely wondering why the prince of the realm would choose to stay so long away.

He felt a momentary longing at the thought, homesickness like a flicker of lightning. But it soon passed, and he clasped Fandral’s arm. “Tell them all not to worry. I am doing exactly what I wish to be doing. And someday I will return. But for now, I am the protector of Midgard, and I find I am more satisfied with my lot than I have been for years.”

“Are you sure you wouldn’t favor some companionship, then?” Volstagg offered. “We’d be glad to stay if you like, at least for a time.”

Thor thanked him but shook his head. He could not deny that he was pleased to see them—to hear familiar voices around him, those who had known him since he was young. But this time he would have to send them back alone. He gave his friends a little smile, a little shrug.

Volstagg rumbled acquiescence and patted Thor’s shoulder again. “If you’re sure,” he said.

His friends remained the rest of that day and a few days more—a few days it took for them to accept that Thor was unlikely to change his mind and return with them, a few days for a spare agent to be found to shepherd them back to New Mexico. Thor spent the time showing them the sights around the city, sharing with them his fascination with the mortal realm and watching their faces as they took it in to the best of their ability until evening fell in a flicker of neon and blaring horns and music wafting from the backs of bars as they passed; the three of them attracted fairly little attention, no matter Volstagg’s booming voice or the glitter of Fandral’s laugh, though of course passersby had no choice but to cede the sidewalk to them wholly.

When they were gone again, though, Thor breathed a sigh of relief.

*

It was only after they’d left that Thor realized no one, carefully, had spoken Loki’s name even once.

The same evening, after he retired to his own bed, the silence of the night swelling with his rustling thoughts, he had realized he had not thought of his brother in far longer. Some time ago he had felt glad that Loki had disappeared, and after that he had tried to put him from his mind.

But he did not want to be someone who would have that thought, who could simply _lose_ his brother and not care.

It still hurt to think of Loki. But as more time passed he found himself doing so more and more, and differently than he had before.

The sting of betrayal had faded. The worst of his wounds had closed and scabbed over, even if they still ached. And with that distance came questions and uncertainty. He began to wonder about what had happened between them. Loki had begun by doing everything he could to hurt him—yet somehow, it had led back to New Mexico, to the hammer, to Loki slumped on his knees in the rain.

Thor was not longer sure he understood it at all.

At last, one day, he slipped away for a few hours by himself. The wind of a drab late autumn rushed cold in his hair as he flew northward along the line of the coast, the grey-green waves breaking beneath him, the slate clouds scurling above. He did not land until he saw the curve of a rocky inlet that was somehow familiar.

He had been there once with Loki, long ago. His brother had brought him, telling him that their Vikings had reached this far; they had spent a night among a different people of Midgard, listening to their tales around a blazing fire. The stories seemed new and old—familiar patterns, changed but ever-true—and Loki beside him was rapt, his eyes glinting in the warm, bronze light.

“Just listen,” Loki murmured.

There were tales of eagles and foxes, of hunters and weavers, of fish and waterfalls, of… of them.

“Loki! They just spoke your name,” Thor whispered, aghast. He’d heard it, he knew he had. The All-tongue did not alter names.

Loki merely tilted his head to listen and he buried a chortle in his hand, for the story had gotten to the part about the badger.

Thor knew he had found the same spot, even if it was changed, and the memories came stronger as he found a place to sit, listening to the waves and simply being.

That long-ago night had been chill, just one of so many such nights as they adventured together in their youth, and they had leaned close to each other for warmth, his arm around his brother’s shoulders, Loki’s wrapped around his waist. But Thor could not remember that now without being reminded of the cold of another place, Loki sitting with Thor’s frostbitten hands held delicately between his own, healing and warming them and giving Thor a hesitant smile—one that now in his memory seemed honestly tender and even a little afraid, though Thor hadn’t seen it that way at the time.

He wrapped his arms around himself, lonesome and aching, as he perched on a seaside stone. He stayed as the rain began to sleet down, meeting the sea spray in the air.

He _missed_ Loki. Loki had been at the center of his heart for so long, and now he wanted his brother back. His… his lover. The one who had tormented him and the one who had saved him.

But he had not seen Loki for months, did not know where he had gone. And he recalled the last time they had spoken outside of battle, with Loki behind thick glass in the SHIELD cell—it had not occurred to him at the time that Loki would actually heed his words and keep away from him, but it seemed he had.

Now Thor would seek him, and he did not know where to begin.

*

When Thor burst through the doors of the Avengers’ Tower again, his rain-soaked hair had partly dried into twisted dark blond ropes against his neck. Damp leather clung to his skin. Mjolnir gleamed dully as he shoved it back into his belt to wait as he stalked from room to empty room, determined and somewhat confused.

Clint Barton was the first he came across, seated at a table with many small mechanical parts spread before him and a screwdriver in hand, and the man glanced up without any apparent surprise at all. “Should I call the weather channel?”

Thor waved a hand, brushing the question aside. “Has anything happened while I was gone?”

“Not that I know of,” Clint shrugged. “Place is still standing.” As Thor glanced around questioningly, Hawkeye added, “It’s Friday night. They’re all out.”

“Oh,” Thor said, fumbling against the silence that fell again. “Has there been any word? Any news of Loki?”

Clint gave him a baffled look, pausing in the middle of his task. “No? Am I missing something? Loki’s off the radar last I checked; there hasn’t been a peep out of him for months now.” With that, the contraption that came together in Clint’s hands was set to spinning with the flick of a finger. A series of mechanical whirs and pops filled the air.

“I know,” Thor said sadly. “That is what troubles me.”

As Thor watched, the archer fitted the new piece to his equipment and then gave him a one-raised-brow look over the quiver. “He’s still around. SHIELD has been keeping tabs on him. Coulson will probably fill you in if you really want to know. For a while there you didn’t seem interested.”

Thor considered this and then nodded. “I will take your advice on the morrow.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We are getting so close to the end, I can't believe it. Everybody sticking with this, you're awesome. :D Please let me know what you think!


	15. Chapter 15

Coulson eyed him across the desk.

Thor had gathered that the man was not actually glad to see him, but he waited in the hallway for as long as it took, arms folded across his chest and his shoulder casually leaned against the wall, standing half a head taller than anyone who might have inquired about his business there. (Somehow, centuries as prince of the highest realm on Yggdrasil’s branches had still not prepared him for the experience of Midgardian bureaucracy, but he faced up to it as best he knew how—through sheer stubbornness and refusal to be put off.) And eventually Coulson had been forced to speak to him.

He looked harried.

“We’ve been doing everything we can to keep tabs on him. Most of the time we’ve had someone on the inside at his organization, but what that mainly means is that sometimes we get advance notice of what they’ve got in the pipeline. Not so much about his person. I’m sorry I don’t have more news.”

Thor frowned. “But if nothing has changed, why has he chosen to avoid me all this time?”

Coulson gave him a carefully blank look. “I couldn’t say. Except that you are the only person on Earth who’s managed to put him in a cell for even five minutes, so there’s that.”

Thor got the impression that the agent was not being entirely honest with him. Nonetheless he nodded and left him to his desk full of other labors. There was one other he could think of—one with both a spy’s background and SHIELD connections—who might be able to help him, if he could convince her.

He found Natasha later that day in her study, a thick, leatherbound book open on her crossed legs. She scrutinized him as he made his plea, explaining what he hoped she might discover for him.

“If I do…” she said, closing the book on her finger and brushing a coppery curl back from her forehead. “Say I find out where he is. What’s your plan then?”

Thor took a breath, trying to come up with the words to explain his change of heart when it came to his brother; he had never told his mortal allies how close he and Loki had been for centuries, the bond they had shared. It had never seemed prudent to do so, and anyway the idea of speaking of such things had been too painful. “The entire time I have spent here, I and everyone else have attempted only to stop him by force. I am ready now to try another way.”

“So what do you want to do?”

“I would speak to him, if he will listen,” Thor said, hesitant, “and try to convince him to make peace with me and with this realm. I do not wish to be at odds with him any longer. I will not let him… continue in his evil deeds, but I must try.”

She studied him, her pale brow creased. Then the book flipped open again in her lap with a whisper of paper.

“I’ll see what I can do,” she said. “No promises.”

*

A week and a half later, there was a call for the Avengers to assemble; when more information came through, a stream of curses had poured from the communication device in Thor’s pocket.

“I know this guy,” Tony Stark said. “Dammit. Watch out for someone coming at you _through_ walls. Without breaking them first.”

Thor had gone along, unconcerned; there were few mortals who could pose him any threat. It was not until they were returning that he realized Natasha had been absent. But he knew she had other duties that drew her away from time to time, and he thought nothing of it.

That night, she reappeared, and she pulled him aside with a subtle tilt of her head.

“Coulson wasn’t lying. Nobody really knows where he is or what he’s doing,” she said. Before he could answer, though, she held up a hand. “But there is something strange. SHIELD _has_ been keeping an eye on his people. And they’re disappearing. The low guys, runners, things like that, some of them are turning up back where they came from, and some of their excuses are pretty weird. But it’s not just them, and that’s where it gets really bizarre, because there are way too many mid-level mooks who are just disappearing.”

He blinked at her in confusion.

She caught his look. “I mean someone’s killing them. Mostly we haven’t turned up any bodies, but we’re usually pretty good at finding people who _are_ still breathing, so we can assume they’re not.”

She gripped the back of the chair before her, fingers tapping anxiously on the wood.

“For a while, SHIELD thought it was infighting, or maybe a rival bad guy going after his people, but it’s not, and it’s got a lot of agents spooked. My theory… I think what’s really happening is that he’s cleaning up: I think he’s taking out his own people. Don’t ask me why, though.”

Like someone dousing the candles before leaving the room, Thor thought, and he stared at her with a buzzing sound growing louder in his ears. “When did this start?”

“Months ago, probably. But we don’t know for sure.”

Loki had been avoiding him all this time. And if it had been months, then surely he was near the end of his preparations. If he departed Midgard now—Thor wondered if he would ever find his brother again. Sweat burst chill on his skin in his sudden panic. If he was right, he had little time.

But he had not gone very far in his own hasty preparations before he found his way blocked by the other four.

“Hey, Hammertime, want to share with the rest of the class, or do you want us to guess?”

“I am sorry,” Thor said. “I do not have time to explain.”

Tony rolled his eyes. “We heard about what Nat told you. And now you’re tear-assing around the place, and I’ve gotta tell you, you have the look of somebody about to do something supremely reckless. I should know, I’ve seen it in the mirror enough. So slow down for a minute. Tell us what’s going on. Maybe we can help.”

Thor took a deep breath. “I need to find Loki.”

There was a possibility even worse than the notion of Loki leaving and giving Thor no way to follow. He had not wanted to consider it. A sick hollow grew in his chest as he thought of it now. “I know you have all wondered what transpired between me and my brother, and I will not tell you of his crimes. But the last thing he did after them was to ask me to kill him. I fear now he means to do to himself what I would not.”

There was silence, a sort of thick dark silence of disbelief (broken by a mutter from Barton, saying, “So you mean we were fighting your _suicidal_ evil brother? That clears everything right up.” Natasha kicked him.).

Thor ignored the interruption and continued, the words spilling out inexorably now that he’d begun.

“I know to you he is just another villain. I understand. But to me… he is my brother. So I must find him. And stop him.”

Thor felt almost certain that they would turn him away, and he steeled himself for their scorn, feeling himself nearly flinch in advance of it.

“You sure you want to do that?” Stark asked.

Thor could only nod, aching.

Tony tilted his head back and shut his eyes, letting his neck roll a little bit, loosely. He spent a moment in thought. “Okay, then. I’ve got an idea. We might just be able to track him down.”

“What?” Thor said. “How?”

“Magic detector. The idea got kicked around back when you two first showed up but nobody had a clue where to start. You and me, though, we can probably figure it out. We’ll hole up in my workshop, order a couple pizzas, set Dummy to making espresso. We’ll be done in no time.”

Thor’s heart leapt as he thought about it. Then it fell again as the hole in this logic became quickly apparent to his eyes. “Loki is not the only sorcerer in this realm. I am not certain that we will be able to pick out my brother’s magic from among them even if we succeed in building such a device.”

It was Natasha who spoke up then, her voice low but confident. “I can give you places to start. We have lists of possible hideouts for him. A magic signature in one of them would be a pretty sure bet.”

“Or try his friends.” This was Clint, sounding almost bored.

Thor frowned. “Friends? What friends does he have in this realm?”

“Maybe that’s too strong a word. Fellow bad guys. _Known associates_. There’s lists like that too; there always are.”

“All right,” Thor said, weak with fear and gratitude, after taking in the sight of all their faces. “We will try.”

*

There was almost a sense of nostalgia to it. Lights flickering on around the workshop at the first hint of motion as they entered, the whir and clang of robotic helpers, the near-silent hum of the computers arrayed around the space. Many things he and Tony had built here together, combining their knowledge and skills to create things of use to the mortals of this world. But never had what they set out to make mattered as much to Thor as this.

He began by trying to explain Loki’s magic, to translate the little he knew into human terms. Tony listened, sketching notes onto an invisible board in the air or tapping a finger to his upper lip as he considered, then shaping something new of intangible light.

Thor was not a mage, yet he did know many things about Loki’s particular sorcery, and that had to count for something. Even if he had not attended to it much at the time, he had watched his brother come to his magic as a child, watched his skill grow until he surpassed his teachers. Likewise Thor had seen the working of countless of his spells over the years. He probably knew more of what Loki could do than anyone but Loki himself. And there were things Loki had kept secret, to be more useful in his mischief. Yet Thor had nearly always found out sooner or later.

“All you have seen of his magic is the destruction he could do with it,” Thor added mournfully. “But it used to be that he turned his cleverness to other things. He is very skilled with illusions. I have seen him conjure a knife real enough to kill, and serpents that dissipated into smoke at a touch. He can create illusory duplicates of himself that copy his motions or those that move and react on their own for a brief time—those are not real enough to touch but plenty to fool the eye.”

“Decoys?” Tony asked.

“Yes, he would use them as such in battle, or in fun. I cannot tell you how many times he…” Thor shook his head, casting the memory aside. “It matters not. Now, where do we begin?”

By the night’s coldest hour, they were almost ready to put the prototype through its very first paces.

“We’ll need to start on a small geographic range. I don’t think it can handle too much all at once, completely aside from the aforementioned problem of maybe picking up everything from Doc Strange to kids with Ouija boards,” Tony called out, elbow-deep in a mess of wires.

It was dawn when they had turned up a signal that matched an entry on Natasha’s list. Two signals, actually, which meant that it was probably what they were looking for.

As they watched, the two overlapping points appeared on the map display as a pair of softly pulsing greenish lights, surrounded by the fainter outlines of the Latverian border.

Tony cursed under his breath. “How did I know that was going to happen?”

*

Loki stalked through Doomstadt in a rage.

He had come here after slipping to the end of his rope. The lapses had gotten more and more frequent, and he was fairly certain they had grown longer as well, consuming entire swathes of hours in what he only ever remembered as a dark mist that resisted his every attempt to combat it.

Someone was trying to control him. Loki was not to be controlled.

Someone had also been interfering with his plans in more prosaic ways, killing off his mortal lieutenants one by one and scattering his minions to the winds, and the lapses had been too many for him to find out who was responsible.

In between those shadowy lapses, he made himself accept at last that he needed aid. He needed a place of relative safety, and he needed the use of someone else’s magic, since his own had proven insufficient in his current state. And he had remembered—after what was probably an alarming stretch of time—that he had access to such a thing among his villainous connections.

So he had gone to Doom for refuge—oh, he’d lied about the reasons for his visit and Doom said nothing, but they both knew it was an act of desperation—and he had smiled as shrewd eyes behind a metal mask stared through him, trying to discern what advantage could be taken of a weakened god. When the dark mists crept in around him, he had in secret siphoned off a trickle of Doom’s magic with which to defend himself. He was fairly sure the mortal did not know.

It was not a comfortable arrangement or a safe one, but it was in fact starting to work. Loki was beginning to feel better, steadier. Emptier, as if some turmoil inside him had been drained away from the hollow shell of his form, but what was left—he felt better. Whatever was gone, it was hardly to be missed.

That peculiar peace lingered through the clank of armored steps, and as Victor appeared in the doorway Loki looked up, expectant.

“I understand my country’s climate is pleasant to Asgardians, but I would prefer not to host an invasion of them,” Doom said.

Loki blinked, and Doom went on to explain that Thor had just crossed the borders into his nation—flying above them and avoiding all the formalities, of course—and that he had stopped to gather himself in a small mountain village that lay just to the southwest of Doomstadt.

“A quaint little place, I understand. He has paid for a room at an inn and spent the last hour supping amongst the peasants,” Doom went on.

“Alone?” Loki asked, frowning. “He is not in the company of any of the other mortal heroes?” he clarified. Doom had enemies of his own; if they had brought Thor with them on the way to some confrontation, then his coming might have nothing to do with Loki.

“Alone.” Doom gave him an expectant look through that metal mask.

“Don’t concern yourself, Victor,” Loki said, managing a sneer. “My brother is easily dealt with.”

But the fragile calm Loki had built over those weeks shattered as everything fell into place.

Someone had been doing something to him, causing all of this, and now Loki saw: there was only one explanation. Thor. _Thor_ had done this to him, and now he would have to come face to face with his brother again, because whatever he was doing wasn’t enough, Thor had to come here to—

Loki swallowed heavily, and his heart raced. He would be near Thor again, and part of him could not help but thrill at that.

But the rest of him was alight with fury, fury at his own weakness, fury at Thor for daring to seek him out after… after…

A dizzy spell caught him, but he pushed through the whirling fog by will alone, and rage burned it away to nothing as the doors of Doomstadt swung wide.

Thor would regret this. Loki would see to that.

*

Thor was woken by a rough shove and by Loki’s voice snarling at him.

“You’re the one who’s been doing this to me, aren’t you?”

Thor blinked up at him, disoriented, from the narrow little bed upon which he sprawled. He had not meant to sleep; he’d only meant to close his eyes, the faint warmth of ale in his veins warring with his nervousness at finally seeing Loki again. And now Loki stared down at him, bristling.

“Loki?” Thor said in awe. “You are still here… you are not…”

“I’m not _what_ , Thor?” Loki said, folding his arms across his chest. “Tell me, what were you expecting to find? What were you attempting to do?”

Thor could only stare.

Loki paced a few aggravated steps. “You should know better than to try to control me. You should certainly know better than to try to use sorcery to do it.” He turned on Thor a renewed glare. “Who did you get to help you? Was this your means of chaining me without chains? Did you expect to come and collect me now and bring me back, docile, to Asgard to be locked up to rot?”

Thor shook his head in utter confusion. “What… Loki, I do not understand. I have done nothing.”

“Don’t feign innocence,” Loki said, low and dangerous. “If you are not behind it, then what are you doing here now?”

Thor could not stop himself from reaching out, brow furrowed, to touch, but Loki only yanked backward and scowled at him.

“I thought… I thought you were going to leave,” Thor murmured, because that was the only part of his worry that he could make himself voice.

“And your vengeance wouldn’t allow that, of course,” Loki said, more softly but with a bitter twist of a smile.

Thor studied him in the dim light of the room, the faint glow of the ancient bedside lamp and the pale moonlight through the high glazed window. “Brother,” Thor said carefully, “I truly do not know what you mean. I have known nothing of you for months. I had grown worried and I wanted to speak to you.”

“The only thing that worried you was the thought that I might go unpunished,” Loki spat, beginning to pace again in agitation, near shaking with anger. “You couldn’t stand the sight of me, and you needed to bind me anyway, to make it so I could not _think_ , and so you… you…”

Mid-stride, Loki swayed. His eyes went blindly wide, face blanched with pain. He seemed about to collapse.

Thor was on his feet in an instant, meaning to catch him. But when he closed his arms around his brother’s form—for just one moment there was only empty air, a vague impression all that was left, like a ghost or a fading afterimage. And then, before Thor could so much as cry out in shock, Loki had snapped back into being, real and solid but with his head sagging forward limply and a dazed look in his eyes.

“Loki!” Thor said, hands on his brother’s shoulders as Loki began to come back to himself. “Loki, what happened?”

As Loki’s awareness returned, the blankness melted swiftly into annoyance. He pushed away from Thor, or tried to. “ _That_ was the effect of your spell,” he growled. “It happens often, as you should know. It is whatever you’ve done to me.”

Thor swallowed. “I vow to you now: it is not my doing, and if someone has cast such a spell on you, to make you disappear…”

Loki’s brow furrowed as he stopped his struggling and held Thor’s gaze. “I disappeared?”

“You did,” Thor answered, solemn. “For a moment only, but I reached for you and you were not there. I could see you, in part, but only like a shadow.”

The look of confusion grew deeper. Loki truly had not known what was happening.

And that was enough for Thor’s thoughts to begin to race, putting the pieces together. Whatever had happened… what it reminded Thor of most was the moment just before one of Loki’s doubles dissipated, when the magic had just begun to weaken. But his doubles had never been tangible. Never real enough to shove Thor off balance as he rested on a tiny bed—yet perhaps Thor did not know the limits of what Loki could do if he needed to.

Loki had not known what was happening. He had disappeared as if he were a thing of magic, and now he was staring at Thor warily… as if he were real.

“Loki,” Thor asked, the air seeming thin in his lungs. “Where are you truly?”

Green eyes widened, startled, disbelief flaring and dying in a flash. Loki’s mouth fell open as if he might answer.

The next moment he was gone completely, and this time Thor knew he would not return.

It was only a heartbeat before the panic fully hit. And only a few brief instants of frantic thought before he was reaching for Mjolnir and moving to follow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last chapter should be tomorrow! And then the epilogue at last.


	16. Chapter 16

Thor fell like a comet and struck the desert ground hard enough to send shivers through it, but it delayed him not a moment, and with a few strides he had come before the gaunt figure that waited just over the little rise of ground.

Loki. Not the well-kempt vision that Thor had seen in Latveria, but Loki, haggard and filthy from months exposed to wind and rain and burning sun, with rust-colored dirt caked under his broken fingernails, eyes deep and haunted and hollow, the skin around them seeming almost bruised.

And Thor found him with his thin arms wrapped around his knees, a ragged black curtain of hair falling back from his face as he tilted his head to gaze upward, blinking sluggishly.

“You’re too late, Thor. It’s already started,” Loki said, and oddly there was no malice in the dry rasp of his voice. Only a sort of exhausted determination.

“What has started?” Thor asked.

Loki gestured over his shoulder, and it was only then that Thor saw it: hovering in the air a few feet away, there was… an object. Thor did not recognize it, could not have identified it; it spun slowly, its edges squirming so that it was impossible to tell even its shape. It pulsed with magic and with menace. It glinted in the early morning sunlight.

Thor stared at it as Loki unfolded himself a little to peer at it, considering. “You can’t imagine how long it took to gather everything I needed for such a spell, especially when I had to hide everything I was doing from myself. You have to admit, that was a good trick.”

“Loki,” Thor said, insistent. “What is it doing?”

Loki’s gaze flicked up to his and away again.

“ _Loki_ —”

At that Loki huffed a peevish sigh. “Do you have to ask? Your brother is a monster, Thor. As long as I live, I will hurt you again and again, because that is all I know how to do. Because I _want_ to. Because I…” He stopped and for a moment his eyes squeezed shut. “This is the only way. Even if I were to die it would not be enough, so I have found a way to remove myself completely, and when it is done I will exist not even as a shadow in Hela’s realm. I will simply be gone.”

Thor felt his heart stutter. He shook his head in refusal. “I don’t want you to do this, Loki.”

Loki gave a thin laugh. “Of course you don’t, even after all I’ve done. And that is why I must,” he added. “Think of it, if you like, as the last terrible thing I will ever do to you.”

Thor stared down at his brother—his brother who was obviously unwell, his brother who had indeed done so many terrible things yet here he was now, a thin, starved creature in the desert, plotting his own death—his own _unmaking_ , and speaking of it so calmly even as he looked away with eyes brimming. His brother who loved him, painfully, undeniably. Brokenly. Thor saw that now.

“I deserve this, Thor. I should have done it long ago, would have if I hadn’t had—if you hadn’t been—”

Before Loki could evade him, Thor sank to his knees in the space before him and brought their mouths together. He breathed Loki’s scent, rust and flame, his fingertips curling against Loki’s neck, stroking at the frantic battering of his pulse there and feeling the heat rolling off his skin.

From somewhere deep in Loki’s throat came a soft sound of despair, and Thor kissed him deeper on instinct, and drew him closer.

Moments later, though, Loki’s hands came up between them, pushing him away. “That’s enough for a goodbye. You should go now.”

Thor could have laughed. “You cannot believe I will actually simply leave and allow you to…”

“You cannot _stop_ me,” Loki interrupted. “Because _I_ cannot stop what I have begun. I made sure of that.”

They both sat unmoving, meeting each other’s gaze like a challenge.

They had been in this place when it all began. All Thor had cared about then was to redress the hurts between them, but they had only grown worse, deeper—and then he had forgotten, too wounded by what Loki had done to him, too mad with rage and pain to care.

And now, when he had healed enough to try again, he found…

It was Loki who looked away first, and as he did so he seemed to crumple, closing in on himself. “Please. I would rather not have the last thing I say to you be a threat. Don’t make me. Please… go.”

Thor found that he had missed his chance and he was going to lose his brother forever.

The horizon blurred as he got to his feet, throat stinging, aware of nothing more than the sounds of his own choked breaths. Hastily, futilely he wiped at his eyes with the back of his hand, and with each inevitable step he took, he felt he was unraveling, the warp and weft of his life coming apart.

He tried to imagine a world in which his brother no longer existed, in which there was only emptiness where Loki had always been. He couldn’t. The grief of it would be too large to feel, too devastating to comprehend. It would be a night with no dawn, a razed wasteland, and there would be no way back.

He could not accept that. But what choice did he have? Loki had said it could not be stopped.

Thor halted where he stood, tears on his face.

No. Loki had said only that _he_ could not stop it, that he had kept _himself_ from wriggling free of his own trap. Thor was no sorcerer, but he was not without power, and he had lately had the experience of having to teach another how magic functioned, so he understood it better now than perhaps he ever had before.

When he turned back, the strange throbbing sphere was still there, spinning and glowing and bobbing a few feet from his brother’s slumped form. Putting an end to such a spell, such an elaborate conjuring, would be dangerous. Thor had only the vaguest understanding of the tendrils the thing would have put out in preparing to rip Loki’s life from the fabric of reality or what might happen if he cut them. Loki could not do it—Thor did understand that as he thought about it; by the very nature of the spell Loki, both its target and its source, could not stop it now.

But Thor could—at least he believed so, and he would risk anything at all to try.

Stalking swiftly back across the cracked ground he hefted Mjolnir, calling for lightning and murmuring a hasty spell under his breath as the hammer’s haft fitted into his fist, and swung.

The sphere exploded in a blast of light and fire, and the force of it rebounded against him, throwing him backward.

He barely heard Loki’s desperate cry.

*

When Thor came to, he was lying on the desert floor gazing up at a wide grey sky, a patter of heavy raindrops crackling in the warm air and pitting the dusty ground around him. And he was aware of Loki lying sprawled near.

He was, happily, aware of Loki’s breathing. He was there. They were both alive. The worlds remained, apparently much as they always had. Thor could hardly have hoped for better.

Beside him, Loki groaned. “You are a fool,” he said, sounding dazed. “Have you any idea what you just risked?”

Thor felt himself begin to laugh, still flat on his back, the joy of triumph overwhelming him. “It did work, though.”

Loki said nothing, but he had not yet fled.

Thor’s laughter trailed off, but his happiness remained, and so he did not hesitate to push his luck. “I have a favor to ask of you,” he said.

There was a pause before Loki answered. “And what would that be?”

“Before, I came with you at your bidding,” Thor said, leaning up on an elbow to look over at him. “Now mean to leave this realm and I would ask that you come with me at mine.”

Loki sighed. “I will not go back to Asgard. I’ve told you that.”

“Asgard is not my aim. That is why I will have need of one who can travel by other means than Bifrost. I will have need of you.”

As Thor watched, Loki sat up and drew up his knees, hugging them to his chest. “Thor. Everything I said before is still true. All I know how to do is hurt you. You should keep away from me.”

“Perhaps. Or perhaps my wants will guide us better.”

Ever since that first disastrous venture to Jotunheim, he had been following where Loki led, in one way or another, even when they were apart. Maybe it was time for a change. And Thor did want to leave; they both needed time to heal on their own terms, in a place where they could do so together. He did not know what place that might be, but he trusted they would find it.

Thor stood then and reached out his hands, and Loki stared at them, uncertainty flickering in his eyes, looking more lost than Thor had ever seen.

But he hesitated only a moment, and then his hands were slipping into Thor’s, letting Thor haul him to his feet. Thor steadied him with an arm under his shoulders as he swayed.

They had a long way to travel, and there would be more pain. Thor had no doubt of that. But he was willing, and for now they were two specks in the vastness of the realm as off in the far distance thunder rumbled and the horizon blurred with a haze of rain.

Loki moved to curl a hand around Thor’s waist.

“We should go, brother,” Thor murmured.

Beside him, still silent, Loki nodded.

And together they left the desert behind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew! Here we are, at the end. Or... well, not quite. Epilogue tomorrow!


	17. Epilogue: Loki takes a walk

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow. I can't believe it's actually over. This has been such a wild ride, made more so by all you lovely readers who shared your thoughts or just let me know you were there and liking it. I know I'm going to miss this story, enough that I'm almost reluctant to post... but, on the other hand, I've kept everyone waiting for this last little scrap for long enough. ;) Hope it does not disappoint!

_Two years later. A secluded wood in a distant realm. Nighttime._

“Loki…”

“Shh.”

Thor drew a deep, shuddering breath as Loki stroked his fingers along the bound strength of his arms. Thor’s spread knees shifted against his sides—he seemed not yet half desperate enough for Loki’s tastes, but he was already beginning to whimper. Loki’s blood sang.

He could not have imagined this when they first left Midgard together.

They had been very careful around each other at first, speaking little as Thor chose their paths, taking them into the wilderness so that they may as well have been the only two beings in all the realms. For much of the first few months Loki felt himself on edge and off balance, and he often doubted his own sanity.

Loki did not know why he had agreed to this. He did not know why Thor had asked it of him.

Yet he followed Thor from realm to realm, trailing after him like his shadow, silent and uncertain. Thor was changed, turned steadier and more thoughtful. No longer the reckless god he had once been, and with a sorrow deep in his eyes that Loki had put there.

Loki did not know why Thor dossed down every night mere inches from where his treacherous brother lay.

Then, one night, under a spray of innumerable stars…

“I have been thinking” Thor said, one arm folded under his head and the light of their campfire rosy on his face. “I have realized that I… I would be with you again. If you still wish it, at least.”

“What?” Loki murmured in shock, eyes narrowing as he turned his gaze from the sky above. “Why would you…?”

Thor made no answer, but only smiled softly at him in the dark.

Loki swallowed, and his voice felt thin. “You don’t want that.”

“Don’t I?” Thor said, with that same smile. “Didn’t I?”

It was enough to make fire and ice crawl beneath Loki’s skin; Thor could not mean that the way it sounded, he could not, but Thor moved nearer and put a tentative hand to Loki’s hip as he lay there motionless.

In an instant they were tearing at each other’s clothing. They were both gods this time, equals—yet he ended up with Thor writhing eagerly beneath him, chest rising and falling with panting breaths, letting Loki pin him to the ground. He ended up mouthing hotly at Thor’s skin, unable to shake his disbelief and throwing himself into it all the more fiercely for that.

When he woke the next morning, exhausted and sore, Thor was already on his feet and speaking cheerfully of his plan for their travels that day, the morning sun through the trees catching in his hair. Loki slipped back into silence, uncertain.

It happened again a few days later. And afterward, they lay in a sweating tangle, Thor’s arm around him holding him close, and Loki felt the strangest sensation. A pressure welling up in his throat.

But the closest he could come to an apology was to put his chin to Thor’s chest and murmur, “I _would_ have undone myself, for you. To save you from me.”

Thor tensed all over, but he held his anger at bay rather than lashing out as he once might have. “Having to mourn you would not have helped me.”

Loki had wanted to answer but he found himself unable, unsure of what to say or why it had all seemed so simple before. Thor got up soon after, pulling on his tunic again and going to stoke their dying campfire as warnings of thunder rumbled in the distance. That night they sat under an overhang as rain poured down and dripped splashing onto the rocks around them, neither speaking.

Dawn was in the sky and the rain still coming down before the silence was broken.

“I know you would have,” Thor said, quiet, from beside him.

Loki turned to look at him.

“I know you better than you believe, brother, all the things you think I cannot know. And still… I am glad you are here with me.”

Loki looked away again, unable to meet his gaze.

The rain lasted all day, and Thor let it, so they rested in that spot. The next morning, woken by a cacophony of birdsong from the damp green leaves, they started their journey again, Thor beckoning Loki to follow.

By midday it felt almost like one of their long-ago adventures, traipsing across the realms like young gods.

And like that, it had gone on. Good days and bad days. The two of them, alone together.

Tonight was one of the good nights, Loki thought as the chill night breeze caressed Thor’s skin in the moonlight, raising gooseflesh and making him seem all the more vulnerable. Thor had let Loki bind him, had let Loki torment him until he trembled under every touch. A few more tiny, shallow strokes—and Thor twitched and strained against the conjured chains.

“Brother, please,” Thor whined, clinging tighter with his legs. Loki hushed him again and bent to place a kiss just above his heart.

But something so good could not last.

And later, as the moon sank toward the horizon and Thor slumbered beside him, Loki carefully got up, glancing back at the shadowy shape of his sleeping brother only once, and slipped silently away into the sparse woods around their little camp.

Everything that had happened had changed them both. For two years, he had watched Thor healing, watched his scars make him better, more beautiful—if that were possible. The good days outnumbered the bad because of him, because of the storm god’s newfound wisdom and calm.

Loki, too, was changed. But he was not sure it could be called healing in his case.

The cool wind stirred his hair and he listened to the whisper of his footsteps on the soft ground and he turned his face skyward, waiting for the frantic tremble to subside in the hollow of his chest.

He was not really going to leave, even if he should. He had taken this walk countless times and he had not fled yet.

If he chose, though, he could disappear. Thor would soon enough give up and return to Asgard, take up the throne that had always been his birthright. And Loki would wander the realms alone, with no one to answer to but himself, with no one to look at him with such bruised patience. Perhaps he could find some distant cave to hide in, where it would not matter if Thor forgave him or if Thor loved him or if Thor knew everything he was. He could hide there until he mended into whatever twisted shape was destined for him, and then perhaps someday, on a whim, Loki could slip home once more, sneak behind that throne, brush his fingertips through a wisp of blond and whisper sly in the young king’s ear— _miss me, brother?_

Loki sighed as the shadow-thin fantasy dissipated as he blinked up at strange stars. And the night breeze rustled the leaves along the trail as his steps brought him inevitably back to their little clearing beneath the trees.

Thor stirred, throwing open an arm to him, and Loki crawled into the space left for him, feeling the lush grass bend under his weight, feeling Thor shift closer. It was warm there, and what Loki felt was likely the closest he could get to happiness.

“You came back,” Thor murmured, nuzzling.

“I did,” Loki said, and he moved so that he could put his arms around Thor, who sighed contented against him.

Perhaps it wouldn’t last. But this was what he had truly wanted, and this time… this time…

Loki took one more deep breath before closing his eyes as well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again for reading! And particular thanks to [Lise](http://archiveofourown.org/users/MorteLise/pseuds/MorteLise), [Tyro](http://archiveofourown.org/users/tyrotheterrible/pseuds/tyrotheterrible), and Cat, who each beta'd various bits and pieces of this thing and offered their support and encouragement. You guys are awesome.


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